[GNC] gnucash suggestions

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 3/17/2024 12:15 PM, J. A. Harris wrote:
> I have been using gnucash for almost 10 years now.  I have downloaded
> the source code and even made some changes to it that I consider
> improvement.  There are other changes that I think would be a good
> idea.  If this is not the place to share such comments, I apologize.
>

> 2. Add a new Generic and INC+EXP account.  No doubt this violates basic
>    accounting rules but for an amateur like me, it is useful to have a
>    single book in which I can separate sections like reserves,
>    retirement, and operating items.  Accounts of type Generic could
>    have sub-accounts of any type.

Your lack of accounting and understanding of the history of double entry 
is confusing you. You might think of BOTH types "income" and "expense" 
as having a single generic type "temp equity" (not yet recorded against 
equity) with the ones with type "expense" just those "temp equity" 
accounts whose balance is normally debit and the ones with type "income" 
those whose balance is normally credit. Because it is usual to want 
reports that group all income accounts together and all expense accounts 
together our books tend to reflect that. But sometimes we want to group 
a subset of income and a subset of expenses together instead. Some of 
the organizations I kept books for did "events" and so might want to 
group all associated with an event together. Not hard, there is no magic 
in the names "income" and "expense". If the balance is debit, it's and 
expense, if credit, an income.

Thus for an event were EXPECTED to make a profit for the organization, 
I'd make them all of type "income". Understand? Yes, what we pay to rent 
the venue is an expense of the event, but we can still have an account 
name "venue costs" of type INCOME a child of the account that totals all 
income and expenses for that event. What makes the charges (the 
transactions for) hall rent, chair rent, cleaning, etc. expense is that 
they are debits to that account.


> 4. Give the users the ability to create new "currencies".  There are a
>    number of occasions where I have assets which have a dollar value
>    but the accounting of that asset uses a different measure.

Those are "commodities" ----- "currency" means something is the legal 
tender of some sovereign power. BUT --- there might be need to account 
for some "local currency" which might not be exchangeable for legal 
tender, and commodities are expected to have some money value. Note that 
I am not talking about things of no value, just not a money value 
(conversion might not be allowed/encouraged). Thus if I were dealing 
with something like "Ithaca Dollars I might use gnucash to track my 
balance, what I received or used them for, etc. in a separate set of books.

More awkward, perhaps, assets which have value, possibly significant 
value, but unclear/uncertain exactly how much.

Michael D Novack