[GNC] Error in "Close Book" help text

[David T.]

Michael, 

I certainly agree with your concerns.

My statement includes my own implication that a good documentarian would explain the broader purpose of the feature as well as its results and means to manage it. My initial statement was terse enough that this aspect was missing. 

To explicate further, the documents would include: 

* a brief note regarding the reason for closing the books (i.e., the historical); 

* an explanation of what exactly the GnuCash CB feature does; 

* an explanation of how to reverse it; and,

* a description of how some reports handle the results. 

David T. 

P.S. I would hesitate to address users' misunderstandings of the accounting principles in GnuCash documentation for the reasons you often cite. I am not an accountant and rules vary by jurisdiction. I've always attempted just to explain clearly what the software *does* and let users figure out what they want to do with it based on those capabilities. 



On Mar 25, 2023, 4:57 PM, at 4:57 PM, Michael or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:
>On 3/25/2023 4:28 AM, David T. wrote:
>> Michael,
>>
>> As a past documentation contributor, I'd assume any person taking up 
>> this bug would attempt to document the functionality of the newly 
>> added feature, regardless of the initial bug request.
>>
>> David T.
>
>What I meant is that it is easy for those inexperienced with 
>bookkeeping, especially those who never did it the old way, to conflate
>
>"close the books" (as a logical operation) and "close the books" using 
>this particular gnucash tool. We see lots of this sort of confusion
>with 
>"opening the books" using the opening value wizard vs doing it the old 
>fashioned way with explicit transaction(s)  to enter the initial
>values.
>
>It might seem unnecessary since most newbies hopefully read the 
>tutorial, etc. but some new to gnucash but experienced with other 
>similar software (like QuickBooks ---- not Quicken) or very experienced
>
>with old fashioned bookkeeping might jump right in and do things the
>old 
>way (without the shortcut/tools). This is also just like the 
>(unexpected?) behavior that to specify options for a report you first 
>run the report default and THEN  use edit=?options to specify the
>options.
>
>Michael D Novack