why gc invoices are not lacking

R. Victor Klassen rvklassen at gmail.com
Mon Sep 16 14:45:06 EDT 2013


There is a rather well-worn argument that GNUcash doesn't need to do invoices any better.

However, while GNUcash began as software designed for double-entry personal finance management, it has a number of features that are clearly designed to enable its use for small businesses.

(Most) small businesses need to generate professional looking invoices.  Most businesses, of any size, need to streamline processes for generating accounting related information, including invoices, so that they can concentrate on their core business.  Being able to generate and print a professional looking invoice in a single step once the data entry is finished is, in fact, something of value to small business owners.  Currently, GNUcash makes it difficult to generate professional looking invoices - the primarily approach is to generate a printable invoice that is interpreted by the software that displays HTML, which limits control over the formatting.   It is possible to generate acceptable invoices by exporting the html and then printing using Firefox (not Safari, or Chrome, if the invoice will run over one page - a limitation of using HTML as the intermediate).    On a Mac, it is equally possible to email that invoice as PDF (print->PDF->email PDF), although this is using a feature of MacOS, so that isn't equally simple on other operating systems.

Many small businesses are not run by programmers, nor do they employ programmers.  When scanning the available choices, a small business owner needs to trade off the advantages of commercial software (yes there are some advantages of commercial software) like Quickbooks against the advantages of GNUcash.  Quickbooks and the like have the capability to produce professional looking invoices without first exporting to some other program.   They also have a number of common reports right.   Quickbooks in particular, at least the lower cost versions, makes some reports difficult if not impossible to generate, and has some very fascist views about how to handle cash deposits, which is why I looked elsewhere, and eventually settled on GNUcash.  

Installing LaTeX and figuring out how to put together the script, and learning how to change the template to get the invoice that actually meets the needs of a specific business really is not an answer.   It could become one if that were bundled with a GNUcash release (although that may stretch what makes sense in the context of GNUcash), and the necessary script were included, along with hooks to make the result not require any command line interactions.

I would therefore argue that there are a number of features of GNUcash invoices that would be not only nice to have, but worthwhile.   I may even find the time to put some energy into them, during the quiet season, which for the business in which I'm engaged, runs from November through February.   My point is that it is fine to voice a wish list.  Quickbooks has some very annoying features, and part of what I like about GNUcash is that if all else fails, I can open up the source and - with luck - find what needs changing to meet my needs/desires.  So failings in GNUcash exist - it's a work in progress.    Not everyone can contribute patches.   But improvements are possible, and do happen.


On 2013-09-16, at 10:28 AM, Johan Pretorius wrote:

> Coming in from the outside here: Is it an option to develop a set of
> "standard" LaTex invoice templates for this tool that was mentioned?  This
> way, non-developers should be able to set their GnuCash up with one of the
> templates and have it work fine with no problems.
> 
> They can then also edit the template (or get their *nix savvy cousin to
> edit it) if necessary.
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 3:17 PM, Mark Hanford <mark at hanfordonline.co.uk>wrote:
> 
>> On 15 September 2013 20:40, Anonymous <nobody at frog.aanmy.com> wrote:
>>>> The most important feature now in terms of business use is to
>>>> automatically create an invoice in pdf, and to make it look "bloody
>>>> fantastic" into the bargain.  It could even sport a "Invoice created
>>>> by gnucash" by line.  One could certainly Print straight to a printer
>>>> but a copy of the formatted Invoice could go to a nominated
>>>> directory.
>>> 
>>> Should gnucash be formatting documents?
>>> 
>>> I used to think that gnucash invoicing was severly limited and
>>> lacking.  But after hacking around to circumvent the limitations, I've
>>> found better tools for the job which are more specialized at what they
>>> do.  Why reinvent functionality?
>>> 
>>> LaTeX is the best formatting/typesetting tool in the world.  There is
>>> a tool for extracting gnucash invoices and generating LaTeX code:
>>> 
>>>  http://stefans.datenbruch.de/gnucash/gc2latex.shtml
>>> 
>>> LaTeX gives great control over the cosmetics of the invoice, and the
>>> results are impressive.
>>> 
>>> The other factor is standardization.  Should every finance tool
>>> reconstruct code that produces a Belgian Credit Transfer Form, for
>>> example?  A proper gnu philosophy is to have many tools each devoted
>>> to a small job that it does well.  The LaTeX invoice.sty package would
>>> ideally be made aware of how to format an invoice for each particular
>>> region.
>>> 
>>> I would rather see gnucash improve on the ablity to import and export
>>> data, to better leverage the efforts of other gnu projects.  The
>>> gc2latex tool would ideally become included as an inherent part of
>>> gnucash, so as to encourage users to exploit the power of latex.
>>> 
>>> FYI, a sample of the Belgian Credit Transfer Form is here:
>>> 
>>>  http://sepabelgium.be/fr/virement
>>> 
>>> Belgian invoices should have that at the bottom.  However, the
>>> graphical construction of that should not be implemented by gnucash
>>> developers.. it should be done by LaTeX developers.  GC developers
>>> should only focus on smooth interoperability with latex.
>>> 
>>>> Emailing the invoice directly to a a customer would be outstanding.
>>>> This is, in essence, my wish list.
>>> 
>>> If you were to use gc2latex, which you would most likely wrap with a
>>> shell script, you could easily write the shell code to email the
>>> invoice after pdflatex generates it.
>>> _______________________________________________
>> 
>> Depends on if the GC community wants non-developers using GC
>> effectively. There's no need for ANY wysiwyg software at all, and yet
>> they're oddly prevalent.
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Johan Pretorius
> Cell: 0829268327
> pretoriusjf at gmail.com
> 
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