[GNC] GnuCash and Swedish accounting legislation

[Michael or Penny Novack]

> The fixed date locking should be stronger, ideally requiring a password.
> The previous year would be locked only when the Treasurer or
> other authorized person is really finally signing off on all reporting,
> after performing all necessary closing entries to recognize accruals (see
> my comment in separate thread "closing of accounts, and locking, "not
> needed in Gnucash"? Needed!") and reviewing the financial reports
> thoroughly.  This matches up to how nonprofits and businesses have to
> operate.  For a nonprofit, the final financial statements would be given to
> board , and used in applications for grant funding, and in filing
> IRS-required financial statements which are eventually published online at
> Guidestar, and so on.  One doesn't want incompatible versions being printed
> out and reported publicly, ever!  One really needs to finalize the previous
> year, for many purposes.

This IS available in one sense. With all of the organizations that I 
have been Treasurer for (and using gnucash) when the year end 
books/reports have been presented to the Board AND APPROVED (that is a 
vote) I would burn copies (of the books and reports at that point in 
time) to "write once medium", keep one and give one into the custody of 
another organizational officer.

The point is less that the books can't be modified than whether any post 
final approval modification could be easily detected.

Please bear in mind that because I made my living doing software (was a 
senior systems analyst and senior business analyst) I did NOT consider 
any password protection in programs, printed bank statement SUPPOSEDLY 
from the bank, etc. to be a reliable safeguard with respect to ME << 
thus I would request another officer to get a statement directly from 
the bank to compare, not one from me. After all, I was paid to direct 
computers to produce statements just like that >>

Mind, having learned bookkeeping in the old pen and ink on paper days, 
the only editing of transactions I ever did in gnucash was correct 
immediate errors at the time the transaction was being entered. If an 
error older than that was being corrected, would be done the old 
fashioned way with a correcting transaction to preserve an audit trail.

Michael D Novack

PS: I would not (in my case) consider even password protection in even 
proprietary non-open software to be adequate. I have wielded tools like 
disassemblers in my day. The change to almost any program to override 
password protection is quite trivial once you find the spot in the 
program where done; modify the destination of ONE branch instruction so 
a wrong answer goes to the same place as a right one. You don't even 
have to reassemble/recompile, just alter the machine code with a hex 
editor.