Multi user

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>But GnuCash also lacks any mechanism to combine those subsidiary books into a master set for the folks who need to see the big picture.
>
>Regards,
>John Ralls
>
>  
>
I assume what you mean by that is that it lacks any provision for 
AUTOMATED feeds between subsidiary books.

Yes, at the agreed interval the head accountant/treasurer would have to 
make those entries. Let's take a simple case like "petty cash". We'll 
assume that the petty cash book has categories for the various petty 
cash expenses (plus probably one for "other") and that the petty cash 
account starts off with a specified and that it has been agreed that 
once a month the (net) activity gets transferred to the main books.

That means once a month the main treasurer enters two transactions 
(using  the monthly "preclosing" of the petty cash books as reference). 
Credit cash for the total spent (and now going to replenish petty cash) 
and debit split for the total of each of those petty cash expense 
categories << thus the monthly total for "office supplies", not the 
detail of each time a box of paper was bought -- that level of detail 
just in the petty cash books >> Then a transaction into the "post 
closing" petty cash books to reflect having restored that much funding 
<< wiping out the decrease in equity of the month's expenses. And yes of 
course, when I did this in the world of LARGE financial systems we 
indeed had everything automated with one set of books feeding another, 
etc. That's the sort of thing I did, design the programs that did all that.

In the case of gnucash, not automated. So the head treasurer would have 
to enter a couple transaction per period per set of subsidiary books 
(typically one in the main books and one in the subsidiary book). If the 
period were daily, you would probably want an automated system. And I 
bet "mid sized business systems" are commercially available to do that 
but I also bet not cheap. But if the period is monthly, maybe not 
impractical to do manually.

Maybe I had best point something out. YES having a DBM so could be 
simultaneous multi-user seems like an easy way to handle this problem. 
But then in general it becomes harder to ensure that the "junior" staff 
can't do what they shouldn't be doing and can't look at what they 
shouldn't be looking at. Should the "accounts receivable" bookkeeper be 
able to touch any accounts except those related to that process? Be able 
to see, for example, accounts in "payroll"? And should those even in 
payroll be able to see more than what all of the other EMPLOYEES are 
getting (the head treasurer can see what the partners/shareholders are 
raking off).

Michael D Novack, FLMI