[GNC] Fiscal Year: Preferences vs Properties

[Paul Kroitor]

I'm afraid I can't agree. Although what you say is true, it's needlessly bleak in laying out the possible approaches.

Take Quicken, for example: every file (set of books) has the fiscal year as a property (defaulting to Jan 1 - Dec 31, but changeable). Every report has a date selection (like GnuCash) with various presets available. For example, one preset, available in virtually every report and graph, is "Last Year". This will always be the fiscal year that most recently ended.

This way, I can go into any file, go a report, and select "Last Year" from the pull-down menu. That's it. I get last year's whatever report, for the correct fiscal period (regardless of what the fiscal year is). I never need to worry about the issue -- last year is always last (fiscal) year.

There are other presets, like "Current Year" and "Year to Date", but (unlike GnuCash) they all relate to the fiscal year of the open file.

In GnuCash, I not only have to remember that I've opened a file with a different fiscal year than the one I just closed, but I also have to check if the fiscal year has rolled over (because GnuCash requires the year be entered as well as the month and day).

There are definitely much easier and less error-prone approaches to this! 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+paul=kroitor.ca at gnucash.org> On Behalf Of Michael or Penny Novack
Sent: July 07, 2022 10:47 AM
To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
Subject: Re: [GNC] Fiscal Year: Preferences vs Properties



> Am I correct that every time I open a set of books with a different 
> fiscal year, I have to go into Preferences to change the accounting 
> period? If I don't do this, all the reports use the wrong start and end dates.

But THIS "problem" is separate from "accounting period".

Reports that require "effective date" or "effective date range" mean that is one of the things you always need to set via edit => options How else would the computer program know what your intent was? They are terrible at reading the minds of humans.

Understand? When you relate this to "accounting period" you are already expecting the computer to have done some "mind reading" << he/she/they wants it for "current", he/she/they wants it relative to real time, etc. >>

Normally, I am NEVER running reports "in real time" but usually for some time at least slightly in the past. For example, New Year's Eve I am not normally sitting at the terminal producing YE reports << OK, for many years I did babysit a LARGE corporate system doing "year end",  but that took several days to complete >>

With the non-profits I was keeping books for using gnucash, in most cases it'd be about two weeks after that I would be running "year end" 
reports << so the default year would ALWAYS be "wrong": I don't want the "current" system year but the "past" one. >>. Two weeks because I would first want to make sure the bank accounts were reconciled (remember "paper" bank statements). I might even have some transactions to enter first (with a date in the previous year), say had not yet done the YE "journal transactions".

Michael D Novack


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