[GNC] automatically account for gst on random purchases

[Brad Morrison]

Thanks flywire!

That GitHub Pull Request link takes me to a comment from John Ralls that 
very succinctly summarizes the difficulties of using GnuCash for larger 
or more complex enterprises.

The rest of that comment is: "Adding those modules is a non-starter: 
Consider that it's been 10 years since we began working on separating 
libgnucash from the application, converting from GObject to C++, and 
changing from a program that can load its data from a SQL database and 
put it back to one that is built around SQL queries. We haven't gotten 
very far.

Those seeking a F/LOSS accounting solution for larger enterprises should 
look to Odoo <https://www.odoo.com>."

I had never heard of Odoo before I read that comment 
(https://www.odoo.com/). From Odoo's website, I also found a small list 
of accounting firms that use Odoo (19 are listed for the USA at 
https://www.odoo.com/accounting-firms). Although that listing is 
organized strangely to me, the firms are listed by "city, USA" NOT 
"city, state, USA" or even "state, USA" and the US is a large country 
with 50 states and 330+ million people, so there are many cities with 
the same name... Regardless, some of the firms on that list may also be 
interested in using GnuCash for "tiny & simple" enterprises, thus the 
occasional requests for bookkeeping/accounting help for businesses that 
use GnuCash may have some more leads available!

flywire: you mentioned that you use QuickBooks for business, have you 
tried using Odoo?

For anyone else following this thread, but unsure as to exactly what GST 
is, I'm assuming that we are talking about the tax concept (and not 
likely the American version of GST) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GST

I'm sure that the GnuCash developers would appreciate any financial 
support from anyone regularly using this software and/or asking for new 
features/updates to be implemented/investigated 
(https://gnucash.org/donate.phtml). For American taxpayers that itemize 
their deductions, just keep in mind that GnuCash is not a 501c3 
nonprofit, nor a fiscally sponsored project of an existing, registered 
501c3 nonprofit 
(https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2023-May/106798.html), 
so those donations may not be tax deductible 
(https://www.irs.gov/help/ita/can-i-deduct-my-charitable-contributions).

Brad


On 6/18/23 04:37, flywire wrote:
> https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/1623#issuecomment-1583966278
> "GnuCash is for tiny and simple enterprises; we often say individuals and
> sole proprietorships. Even having employees makes using GnuCash a dubious
> proposition (no payroll module), as does carrying more than a very few line
> items of inventory (no inventory module) or performing any sort of
> manufacturing (no bill of materials or cost accounting modules)."
>
> GnuCash supports GST for Accrual Accounting but not Cash Accounting, go
> figure.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I proposed a process for Cash Accounting with Automated GST:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2021-September/097666.html
> TLDR; Automate GST for cash accounting by preprocessing transactions to
> enrich with GST and import as a multisplit file
>
> 1. This isn't going to work on random transactions, you need to know which
> accounts have GST
> 2. I already preprocess bank transactions in a spreadsheet before importing
> but I haven't got around to splitting for GST (because I still use
> QuickBooks for business)
> 3. I'd probably do the splits in python and integrate it into LibreOffice
> Calc
>
> If anyone is interested I'll work on it.
>
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2023-June/107405.html  R
> Losey wrote:
>> You MIGHT be able to get fancy by getting the data into a spreadsheet,
>> having macros to assign the GST and travel categories, and then import the
>> spreadsheet into GnuCash.
>>
>>
>> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2023-June/107404.html
> Karl May wrote:
>>> For my business setup I am wondering whether there is a way to
>>> automatically
>>> account for gst on small random purchases (e.g. hotel, restaurant etc.).
>>>
>>> My current setup is roughly
>>>
>>> Assets:financial_assets:bank_account
>>> Assets:financial_assets:gst
>>> Expense:travel
>>>
>>> So far I haven't setup Accounts/payable and Accounts/receivable.
>>>
>>> The current process is:
>>>
>>> A) import bank account transactions via OFX into "bank_account" and
>>> "imbalanced"
>>> B) manually go through all transaction, use "split transaction",
> manually
>>> calculate the gst and assign amounts to Expense:travel and
>>> Assets:financial_assets:gst.
>>>
>>>
>>> Any suggestions how this can be automated such that the default is a
>>> transaction split and application of a default GST rate?
> Regards
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