Bump: setting the accounting period

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:59:44 +1100
Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 11:03 +0100, Geert Janssens wrote:
> > > This is probably an embarrassingly simple question but - how do I
> > > set up for an accounting year that runs from 1 July through 30
> > > June?
> > > 
> > > The options available in Edit->Preferences are:
> > > 
> > >    today
> > >    start of this month
> > >    start of previous month
> > >    start of this quarter
> > >    start of previous quarter
> > >    start of this year
> > >    start of previous year
> > >    absolute
> 
> The more I look at these, the less I understand them. How can the
> start of the accounting period be "today"? What does that mean? Is it
> converted to a date for internal use? If so, does it change every day,
> or does it stay the same, once set? What are the start and end dates
> actually used for?
> 
> Accounting in Australia very commonly runs from 1 July through 30
> June. It seems to me that to support that, GnuCash would have to add
> a field to this dialogue "Year starts on", with a  default of "1
> January", and permitting values such as "1 January" "start January",
> "end January". This additional field would then permute the meaning
> of "this year", "last year" etc.
> 
> I'd like to discuss this before I post it as an idea. How do other
> Australian users handle this?
> 
> Regards, K.
>  

all I can answer is that I have got absolute start and finish dates set
currently 01/07/10 and 30/06/11
relative start dates would mean I wouldn't have to change them later