How safe is GnuCash?

[Securenym.net]

You are correct, but they do.  

I was called in for a problem in the last century as the computer guy to help an auditor determine why the books were strange in a non-profit fund accounting system.  I can’t go into details, but the accounting system programming (COBOL) was misprogrammed at some point and things happened.  The organization and the auditors determined the misprogramming was accidental, the funds were restored, and no harm was apparently done, and the matter was dropped.   The program had been written years earlier and the old auditors assumed it worked as it was supposed to.  The new auditor backtracked transactions to source documents and found something out of whack, triggering a more in depth audit, which ultimately led to a code audit.  Auditors beware:  the computer may not be as honest as you think it is.

With accounting systems, source document tracking is fairly easy, relatively speaking.  

Electronic Medical Records are another matter, and that nightmare has yet to fully surface, and as the computer is the source, there are not supposed to be any source documents.


> On Jan 13, 2017, at 7:05 PM, DaveC49 <davidcousens at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 
> The only real check that no-one is manipulating the books in any situation is
> the agreement between the particular set of records (gnucash file) and other
> externally maintained and available records (bank statements, receipts ,
> invoices, etc) held by both the entity whose books are being audited and any
> other entity they have dealt with.  The internal consistency of the
> particular set of records being checked is only one factor in an audit. 
> 
> An auditor would not and should not rely on any inbuilt software system to
> guarantee the authenticity and reliability of any set of records. It may
> make some aspects of his or her job a little easier, but it won't negate the
> need to verify the records against externallly maintained sources.
> 
> David Cousens
> 
> 
> 
> --
> View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/How-safe-is-GnuCash-tp4688727p4688823.html
> Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.