[GNC] GnuCash and Swedish accounting legislation

Christopher Lam christopher.lck at gmail.com
Sun Aug 9 11:28:28 EDT 2020


This is not a problem that can be solved in an open-source software.
Perhaps you're looking for a datafile archiving and notarization service?

On Sun, 9 Aug 2020 at 09:27, <bengtxyz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Would like to revive this old thread since the request made by the OP is
> still valid for us Swedish users (and maybe German users according to one
> post in the thread?). I wonder if there has been some development along
> making transactions "persistent" or read-only/locked/un-changeable?
>
> In short the request was made since the Swedish accounting legislation
> requires transactions to be persistent, i.e. when entered into the ledger
> it
> shall not be possible to change it afterward (or rather, entering of the
> transaction is considered completed when it has been made persistent). To
> shortcut a long discussion about how silly this requirement is, because you
> can always change your transactions somehow by editing databases etc., we
> can postulate that it would be enough to fulfill this requirement if the
> transactions somehow was made read-only in an irreversible manner from the
> user interface. I.e. once  a transaction is made read-only, it should not
> be
> possible to change it from the UI. ( I also understand that a differently
> compiled version of gnucash could import the data files and change the
> read-only transactions, but that would be ok also since the intention is
> not
> to fully secure a system against such changes, which is more or less
> impossible, but make it difficult for the ordinary user to change
> transactions afterwards).
>
> Here is the last post in the old thread from 2016:
>
> ---
> On 2 February 2016 at 15:39, John Ralls
> <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user> wrote:
> >
> >> On Feb 2, 2016, at 8:17 AM, Colin Law
> <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 18 January 2016 at 08:18, Draug
> <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user> wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> For quite a while I've used GnuCash for the accounting of my company,
> but
> >>> recently I've come to question if it's legal to use GnuCash for that
> >>> purpose. According to Swedish accounting legislation, you are not
> allowed to
> >>> use accounting software that allows you to edit registered transactions
> >>> (where they use Excel as an example), which to my knowledge is quite
> easy to
> >>> do in GnuCash, even after reconcilation. Swedish accounting legislation
> >>> requires that every mistake is corrected with another transaction, and
> that
> >>> the mistake is left intact in the records.
> >>>
> >>> Is there anything that I've missed that makes it possible to use
> GnuCash
> in
> >>> accordance with Swedish law? I really want to avoid switching to some
> >>> proprietary, cloud-based accounting software that costs $12 a month to
> use.
> >>
> >> An email from Geert in a different thread has reminded me that there
> >> is already code that optionally makes reconciled transactions read
> >> only. I wonder then whether it would in fact be a fairly simple change
> >> to the code to make it so that /all/ transactions would be locked,
> >> dependent on a configuration option that could be set but not cleared.
> >>
> >
> > Yes, the locking code is already in place-or more likely, in several
> places-so it would just take a creation option in the New File Assistant to
> make a book immediately lock transactions. Like the root account currency,
> it would be unchangeable once the book is created.
> >
> > I don't think we'd want it to be a config option because that would
> require either that users who want the feature build it themselves or that
> distros and we provide multiple packages. Building is beyond the ability of
> most of our target audience, particularly on Macs and Windows, and aside
> from the distros probably not wanting to cooperate there's a good chance
> that many users would accidentally get the build they didn't want.
>
> Sloppy use of words on my part, I meant a setting rather than a build
> option, but a creation option would be even better.
>
> Colin
> ---
>
> Regards
> //Bengt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see
> https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list