AU tax invoicing

[Geert Janssens]

On Thursday 03 October 2013 00:27:35 David wrote:
> shane litherland <litherland.farm <at> gmail.com> writes:
> >> Hi all,
> >> 
> >> re: post/thread by Karen
> >> http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnome.apps.gnucash.user/50706
> >> 
> >> Ah... the several-day drama of setting up customised tax invoices,
> >> which >>I had to do basically every time Gnucash updated over the
> >> past several years...
> >> 
> >> The config.user option was an improvement over editing/inserting in
> >> the gnucash reports folder, but still gave me issues along the
> >> way...
> >> 
> >> But no more!
> >> 
> >> Now I've just downloaded to /home/.gnucash the lovely work provided
> >> via http://www.raid6.com.au/posts/gnucash_AU/
> >> 
> >> Thanks Dmitry et al - much tidier than my beginner hacking ever
> >> was!
> >> And - it seems to work fine!
> >> added to config.user:
> >> (load "/home/office/.gnucash/invoice-au.scm")
> >> 
> >> after downloading the two scm files to .gnucash
> >> 
> >> Opened up gnucash fine, could play with invoice layout. Am still
> >> playing and intend to just save a custom version of it as per
> >> saving any custom report.
> >> 
> >> One improvement I made in the invoice-au.eguile.scm though - I
> >> added
> >> <strong>ABN:&nbsp</strong> to get "ABN: " showing before company
> >> number (aka Australian Business Number)
> >> [lines 174 - 176 in my file]
> >> 
> >>     <?scm (if coyid (begin ?>
> >>     
> >>       <strong>ABN:&nbsp</strong><strong><?scm:d coyid
> >>       ?></strong><br>
> >>     
> >>     <?scm )) ?>
> >> 
> >> And it seems to still function fine
> >> 
> >> PS not sure why Karen had her original troubles with these scm
> >> files as her link seems the same place I got them and they work OK
> >> for me, but I am on ubuntu12.04 not win so can't troubleshoot.
> >> PPS Yes Derek's tip to keep a report open is handy.
> >> 
> >> -Shane.
> 
> Hi Shane and Karen
> 
> I think the problem is the file locations on Windows and Ubuntu are
> different.  I am using Gnucash 2.4.13 on Windows 8 and have also been
> unable to get Dmitri's handiwork to work yet. Under Windows 8 the
> executables for Gnucash (x86 version) are located at
> 
> "C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash" ( which appears to correspond to the
> /home/.gnucash location under Ubuntu) with subfolders /bin, /doc,
> /etc, /lib, /share and /uninstall
> 
Hi David, this is not quite true:
C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash on Windows is not equivalent to /home/user/.gnucash on 
Ubuntu.

C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash maps to / instead.
So C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\etc is equivalent to /etc
and so on.

> and the user data appears to have two possible locations
> 
> C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\GnuCash which is an empty folder
> 
I don't think this is currently used. I'm not even sure how it gets there.

> and
> 
> C:\Users\Username\.gnucash
> 
> which has subfolders
>    /books (this contains references to books I have setup but not the
> data files for them, i.e. files with extensions ".gnucash.gcm"),
>    /checks,
>    /translog
> and contains the files
>    accelerator-map,
>    expressions-2.0 (empty),
>    saved-reports-2.4 and
>    stylesheets-2.0.
> 
C:\Users\Username\.gnucash is the Windows equivalent of /home/user/.gnucash

The . marks all the difference.

This directory stores user configuration data for GnuCash. So your real books won't be in 
there as you have found.

> the only configuration files I can find are located at
> 
> C:\Program Files (x86)\gnucash\etc\gnucash  which contains files
>    config
>    environment
> 
> config as distributed is blank  and contains the following
> 
> ;;; -*-scheme-*-
> ;; Sample system-wide config file.  At the moment, it's empty.
> 
As it notes, this file is system-wide. You should not edit it unless you want the changes to be 
visible for all users on you system.

On Windows you can probably get away with it. On linux it would be very clear this file should 
only be edited by an admin.

> environment sets up environment variable for the Windows distribution.
> 
> I have downloaded the files from
> http://www.raid6.com.au/posts/gnucash_AU/ to C:/Users/David/.gnucash"
> and added the following line to the config file at C:\Program Files
> (x86)\gnucash\etc\gnucash
> 
> (load "C:/Users/Username/.gnucash/invoice-au.scm")

While it works, this is not the recommended way.

Instead of altering the system-wide config file, you should create a user config file in C:
\Users\Username\.gnucash

The name of the config file is config.user. You can add the line in there.