Top level account without any type (or file links)

[Robert Heller]

At Wed, 16 May 2012 18:04:09 +0200 Geert Janssens <janssens-geert at telenet.be> wrote:

> 
> On 16-05-12 17:35, Colin Scott wrote:
> >> In fact, what you really want is:
> >>
> >> A separate set of books for each partnership.
> > The real downside of this is that (unless something has changed recently) it isn't possible to keep more than one set of books open at the same time.  If you are the book-keeper for multiple sets of accounts, moving from one set of books to the next is slow and horribly clunky.
> > As Treasurer of my Rotary Club I am required to keep two sets of accounts - those relating to the management of the Club itself, and those relating to the Club's charitable activities.  These sets of books are essentially separate, but there are linkages, in that there are fairly frequent transfers of funds from the Club books to the Charity books
> >
> > Arranging this as two completely separate sets of books is, frankly, a nightmare, for the reasons given above.  I have therefore had to set up Club and Charity branches under each of the four top-level accounts, and then when reporting enusre that I only use accounts from the relevant branches.
> >
> > Were the top level account always of type "Books", and accounts of types Assets, Equity, Income, Expenditure etc always required to have a Books parent, then I could arrange things simply.  The top level of the hierarchy would be Rotary Books, under which I would have Club and Charity Books, and then the conventional structure underneath each of those.  In this configuration, a) my books would be *far* easier to manage than they are now, and b) I would be able to switch between the two sets of books without having to close one file and open another, and c) I would be able to create transactions legitimately spanning the two sets of books.
> >
> > Note:  I understand that implementation of such a scheme would be non-trivial, as it would undoubtedly involve some fairly fundamental changes to the way data is managed.  I therefore would not expect such a change to occur any time soon, or even at all.  Perhaps a simpler and neater solution to this recurring question would be for gnucash to be able to run multiple simultaneous instances, each instance working on a separate set of books.  This would make switching from one set of books to another instantaneous, whilst honouring all the other  valid constraints that we are told need to be maintained.
> >
> > In any case, it seems to me that this whole question, the way it keeps recurring, and the way it is always answered, is quite a good example of the way that gnucash developers often see things from their own perhaps slightly blinkered viewpoint (which is fine, so far as it goes!) but fail to see that many gnucash users have different and conflicting, but nontheless valid, viewpoints.
> >
> > Thus I would at least ask for a little more understanding of why people who use gnucash so regularly ask about this, and for acceptance of (and perhaps a little sympathy for!) the view that despite the genuine reasons for not providing the facility requested, as rehearsed in this thread and on each previous raising of the question, for certain types of gnucash user those downsides would be outweighed by some genuine real-world benefits were gnucash to work as suggested.
> >
> Actually it is possible to keep more than one set of books open at the 
> same time. In fact I do it all the time as I manage 3 small businesses 
> with GnuCash.
> 
> You can't do it via File->Open, but you can double-click on several data 
> files in your OS's native file manager and the books will open next to 
> each other.

It should also be possible to just fire up fresh instances of GnuCash
from an application launcher or toolbar or even the command line and then
open different files (or databases) in each instance.  *Some* OS's allow
creating desktop launcher icons with customized command lines, so with
those operating systems, it should be possible to create multiple launcher
icons, each of which are tied to partitular set of books.

> 
> I wasn't there when the decision was made regarding File->Open 
> automatically closing currently open books, but I guess the it was made 
> based on the most frequent use case of that time: one person usually 
> only manages one set of books. There were no business features then. 
> This is obviously not the case for me or you.
> 
> And yes, I think that it will indeed require quite some refactoring of 
> the code before this can be changed. GnuCash assumes in many places 
> there is only one book open at the time. My solution is a workaround, 
> which works because it opens two completely independent instances of 
> GnuCash. Each instances only sees one book.
> 
> Geert
> 
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-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933 / heller at deepsoft.com
Deepwoods Software        -- http://www.deepsoft.com/
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