Gnucash limitation from accountant perspective

Maf. King maf at chilwell.net
Mon Aug 14 17:50:23 EDT 2017


Hi Seng,  

Welcome to the list.  My answers are from the perspective of a long-time user, 
not a developer.

On Monday, 14 August 2017 16:08:05 BST seng wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I recently let my business's bookkeeping done by Gnucash with the help of an
> accountant. She is familiar with Tally (a famous accounting package used
> herein India) and new to Gnucash. She feels several key/core functionality
> are missing in Gnucash which are found in Tally. I'd like to know whether
> they really got missed or she has trouble recognizing those features in
> Gnucash.
> 
> 1) When I tried to extract Profit and loss report for 1-4-2017 to 31- 03
> 2017, the end date automatically changes to 02/27/1899

I would note that searching for transactions between today and yesterday is 
always likely to give some strange results.    However, someone else brought 
up reports defaulting to 1899 a week or two ago.  I think she fixed it with a 
fresh install of gnucash V 2.6.17 - the root cause was never really 
established, so this may be a bug that needs closer investigation.

> 
> 2)Gnu cash mixes everything in a single page, which is not correct from
> accounting point of view. Profit and Loss should be disclosed separately and
> Balance sheet should be disclosed separately.
> 
> 3) Profit and loss should show income and expenditure: Balance sheet show
> assets and liabilites: Hence Gnu cash is lacking this point, as far as I'm
> concerned
> 

My balance sheet and P&L reports are as your accountant suggests they should 
be - P&L is a report of income & expense; Balance sheet looks at assets & 
Liabilities, so this may be error somewhere in your report options or account 
set-up?


> 4) If we want to know the profit for any month, we may find it difficult to
> arrive at
> 
> 

I think P&L can run for periods less than a year without trouble - but it 
sound like you have different trouble at the moment if you are seeing Assets 
in the P&L report.

If you need further help, then reply to the list with more specific info - what 
does your P&L show.  Also GC version and underlying operating system is always 
useful to know, too.

HTH,
Maf.




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