[GNC] BotanyBayGardens nonprofit example, and why GnuCash does not suffice

[Adrien Monteleone]

1. Job Costing

While not 'out of the box and in your face obvious' I think GnuCash can 
handle 'Job Costing' at least at a rudimentary level now. This sounds 
like a more specific request of the generic 'classes/categories' RFE 
that pops up frequently. (another is for revenue/profit centers used by 
managerial accounting)

I agree that advice to use the account hierarchy to do this only works 
for the simplest use cases, but otherwise turns into quite a mess.

User specified 'tags' are the ticket.

For cleanliness and sanity, these should probably be placed in the Notes 
and/or Memo fields and a standardized representation decided on by the 
user. (such as a preface of '#', '@', brackets, parenthesis, etc.)

The downside is GnuCash will not keep a list of these tags. That would 
have to be maintained separately as exact spelling makes reporting 
easier.(though some crafty regex can help)

Reporting is facilitated by using the Transaction Filter option on the 
tag text. Unfortunately the P&L/Income Statement Report and Balance 
Sheet Report, do not contain this option. The Transaction Report does, 
but massaging that into one of the other forms would still require 
spreadsheet editing.

So to achieve 'job costing' in the short term would require adding the 
Transaction Filter (and regex option if possible) to at least the P&L 
and/or Balance Sheet, but it should probably belong on several others as 
well.

Then a good wiki page can educate with screenshots and examples on how 
to accomplish the task.

If a tagging facility were officially added, this would be another piece 
of the puzzle. (I think it is already a filed RFE) But that might have 
to wait till GnuCash is a proper db-based app.

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2. Statement of Cash Flows

I don't recall if this was heavily discussed in a thread or bug report 
(I think a bug report, maybe both) but I recall looking over this last 
year when trying to help a user with the current Cash Flow report.

Indeed it isn't anything at all like a 'Statement of Cash Flows'.

I theorized that it *might* be possible to get close if the Options > 
Accounts section were divided into 3, one for each of the three parts of 
the standard report form. John noted it is too difficult for GnuCash to 
know what accounts belong in each section, so like with other such 
questions for other reports (even this one as it is now), let the user 
select them.

The report code would then have to be altered to run through the 
selected accounts, subtotal and display for each of the three sections 
of the report.

I think it is doable in concept, but I don't know overall how tedious 
that might be to implement. I don't speak Scheme, but I suppose it is 
time to learn. Christopher might be able to advise more concretely where 
the difficulties lay.

In any case, the current report is misnamed if not a bit confusing to 
users looking for a 'Statement of Cash Flows', and this has been 
discussed in at least one bug report, but I don't think a suitable 
alternative has been agreed upon.


Regards,
Adrien

On 7/25/20 12:59 AM, jean laroche wrote:
> Thanks for the very detailed analysis of Gnucash's shortcomings for 
> nonprofits (and other businesses).
> I'm not an accountant either, barely a computer scientist.
> If I were to summarize the areas where GC falls short, it seems to me GC 
> is missing:
> - Support for Job Costing
> - Cash Flow reporting isn't what it should be.
> 
> Could the original poster (Don) confirm that these two features, if 
> fixed/implemented would go a long way toward making GC more suited for 
> nonprofits?
> 
> Perhaps the developers (including me, in a  modest manner) could then 
> discuss whether these would be easy to add/fix. Perhaps these features 
> have been discussed in the past? Job costing, in particular, may not be 
> that hard to implement? The Cash Flow reporting might also not be too 
> hard to fix, once the OP specifies exactly how it should be done, ideally.