export general ledger

Wm wm_o_o_o at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Dec 18 14:17:26 EST 2017


On 18/12/2017 18:13, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> Jeff,
> 
> If I recall correctly from other discussion, the General Ledger is not it’s own entity. It’s a ‘view’ of the separate account ledgers all rolled into one. This is probably why there is no export option for it.
> 

You recall incorrectly.  The general ledger is (as the name suggests) 
actually about as pure a view as the UI gives of the entirety of a gnc 
set of accounts as is available.

gnc does not actually have separate account ledgers at all, it belongs 
to the stream of transactions accounting family.

> GnuCash takes the opposite approach from paper books.

that may be correct or incorrect, depending on where you learned accounting.

> With paper, you enter everything in a General Journal and then later post the proper amounts to T-accounts.

Not in UK accounting you don't.  In UK accounting you do it the other way :)

> With GnuCash, you skip the Journal and enter directly to the accounts.
> 
> The General Ledger was provided for the benefit of those who were used to the paper method and wanted the option to see all transactions in chronological order regardless of accounts used.


Bollocks.

> But I don’t see why you can’t combine the files after the fact. That’s an easy concatenation command.

Oh, for fuck's sake.  There are no separate files, it is a stream of 
transactions.

> It is curious that you can’t export ‘all’ transactions and have to choose only one hierarchy at a time.

Yes, that is a bit weird, but it is probably like that because someone 
had the same misunderstanding as you about separate account ledgers 15 
or more years ago.

-- 
Wm



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