[GNC] Managing multiple vehicles

flywire flywire0 at gmail.com
Sat Feb 5 17:00:38 EST 2022


> How many "classes" can be assigned to the same account? In
other words, can an account be a member of many different "classes"? If
that is not possible, if only one, then it should be obvious why an
accountant would find pretty useless.

Rest assured, classes have nothing directly to do with accounts.
Transaction for each class can contain many accounts and those accounts can
occur in other classes. Classes are assigned to transaction records which
can be split for the purpose of assigning classes like they are for
accounts. Quickbooks can only have one class per record but, as noted in
https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=113772#c6, classes would be much
more powerful if they were multidimensional.

The bug report has many examples, mainly around managing entity enterprise
diversity. Consider a contrived example of an entity with an account for
diesel and classes assigned to: farming, trucking and generator.
* an accountant might be interested in different taxes for on-road,
off-road, and electricity generation use
* a manager might be interested in cost of electricity production to assess
the viability of solar PV

The first scenario is best served with a grouped report, say profit and
loss, with the same total as current reports. It is especially useful where
many (but not all) of the accounts occur in one class. The second scenario
would best use a filtered report by [electricity] generation class.

Classes are nearly always auto-assigned to transactions in Quickbooks after
first use. The reports wouldn't need to be set up or saved (just use class
option), and they could include all accounts for the class, not just diesel.

>


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