[GNC] [GNC-dev] Automatically split transactions with sales tax

[elvis]

On 12/11/18 2:56 am, Michael or Penny Novack wrote:
> On 11/11/2018 6:23 AM, elvis wrote:
>> Seriously? Are you just telling someone to type stuff stuff in? The 
>> WHOLE point of computers is to automate stuff.....
>>
>> What if they have 1000 transactions? At a minute a transaction that a 
>> whole day entering stuff that could be in under a SECOND....
>>
>> I know if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail, but really 
>> we should be thinking of inventing a better hammer... or eliminating 
>> the screw entirely. 
>
>  Well yes, and this used to be exactly my line of country, writing 
> "sproj's" (special projects; ad hoc programs) to generate thousands of 
> transactions.  Well more like tens of thousands, which would be a lot 
> of end users entering by hand for day after after day. But please take 
> note of that "ad hoc" because almost never EXACTLY the same even when 
> the same type of transaction being generated. Sure, I had useful 
> skeletons in my library, 90+% of the program going to be the same but 
> needing changes before each use << my main activity my last few weeks 
> before retirement was to get that library indexed "this skeleton is 
> good for that" so junior programmers could use it >>
>
> THAT is why this sort of thing best done OUTSIDE of gnucash, a stand 
> alone program (that took "instruction input" and data input) which 
> created a file to be imported. Not PART of gnucash because one user's 
> needs will not be the same as another's. To make this clear .....
>
> Person who made the initial request ---- please describe YOUR 
> situation in detail. What input would you be expecting to feed this 
> program and how would it calculate the tax amount to be split? ALL 
> things sold taxed at the same rate in your jurisdiction? That would 
> not be true for other users. Simple rate? Or something odd for 
> fractions of a dollar (every state I've lived in with a sales tax had 
> special rules for that).
>
> USUALLY business systems designed to handle sales have a component 
> that does this, usually called a POS (point of sales) component and 
> THAT generates transactions which feed the general ledger program << 
> POS would also produce feeds to the inventory system >> Gnucash is 
> JUST "general ledger". Personally I think that there should be teams 
> working on these other sorts of systems (to have an open source POS, 
> and open source "inventory", etc.). However it is important to note 
> that POS systems are often sold by the same company that sells the 
> register (doing things like keeping track of cash, producing customer 
> receipts, etc.). Might be far fetched to expect one of these outfits 
> to produce something to feed gnucash << but here could sit an open 
> source program to CONVERT the output to what gnucash wanted >>
>
> Michael D Novack
>
>
Hi Mike, you have very fair points there. I have often wondered how best 
to implement something like this and whether or not it would be useful 
to enough people to be a core feature.

My input problem is with purchases and not sales, I sell very few things 
but at a high price that entering them through the business features 
isn't a hassle.


And how would I implement the feature I wanted? Well the qif importer 
does pretty much all of it already. All it needs is something like (Add 
a split) to (debits/credits) , (Split account)  (amount). That would 
work for places that have a fairly fixed rate of tax like Australia's 
gst and I assume vat in other places. The tax tables are already set up 
and if I recall correctly linked to accounts, with a tax split account 
defined. Another way would be to add the tax to anything imported to 
that account.

Anyway I am not a great programmer so I am grateful for what I get, but 
I have seen this query enough times over the last 10 years to sometimes 
try and add some support to it.

Cheers

Lawrence




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