GnuCash

[Derek Atkins]

Keith Bellairs <keith at bellairs.org> writes:

> Derek,
>
> Didn't mean for it to be irrelevant. I understand that gnucash does not
> support activity based accounting, and it doesn't hurt to let new users know
> that. A knowledgeable user will understand that subaccounts do not provide the
> functionality they are looking for. (You can sketch 3-space in 2-space, but
> its still 2-space.)
>
> That said, I have been a satisfied gnucash user for xxx years (a really long
> time) and have never felt the loss for not having activity based accounting.
>
> Sure would be an ugly patch.

LOL!  You haven't seen some of the patches I've seen.  ;)

> Keith

-derek

> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 1:02 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
>
>     Keith,
>    
>     Keith Bellairs <keith at bellairs.org> writes:
>    
>     > Subaccounts do not supply all of the functionality of "activity-based"
>     > accounting, unfortunately. If I create subaccounts for each business and
>     > track how much office supplies I use for each business it then becomes
>     much
>     > harder to answer the question, how much office supplies are we using all
>     > together - you have to create a report that finds the office supplies
>     > subaccount for each business. If you never have to answer the "all
>     > together" question then subaccounts are fine.
>     >
>     > Activity based accounts really add a new "dimension" (in the
>     mathematical
>     > sense) to each account. It has already been mentioned that "activity" is
>     > orthogonal to the existing account structure.
>     >
>     > Of course this creates a pain when entering data. Now you have to
>     identify
>     > both the activity and the rest of the account info for each transaction.
>     So
>     > it sounds cool but might not really get that much use in the typical
>     case.
>    
>     While what you say here is correct, it's irrelevant here because GnuCash
>     does not support "activity-based" tagging of transactions, so the only
>     tool you have right now is additional subaccounts.
>    
>     Patches always welcome.
>    
>     > Keith
>    
>     > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>     > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>    
>     -derek
>    
>     --
>           Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>           Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>           URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>           warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available