Difference between revisions of "WishList"

Revision as of 05:27, 2 June 2009

Note: The main place for submitting enhancement requests is the bugzilla database, see Bugzilla. Use this query for a direct list of all currently open GnuCash items.

Projects

Some issues which are either big/important or for which some information has already been gaterhered have their own page:

• Clickable Reports UI

Other issues which have been mentioned here but should be discussed in Bugzilla are:

• Time of transactions

Old discussions are archived on OldDiscussions.

Create a context-sensitive help system.

GnuCash can be an intimidating program, at times, in part because it exposes enough complexity from double-entry accounting to be dangerous. One way in which this could be relieved is a conditional-display context-sensitive help system. For first-time users, or on-demand, a sidebar or top-bar containing a short summary of the dialog or window being viewed could come into place. This help-pane should provide a very brief discussion of the goals and terminology used in the dialog, with hyperlinks to more detailed help.

Answer from current developer: This will probably be a lot easier after the Gnome2 port is completed, which will take well into mid-2005. After that, the Gnome2 internal context-sensitive help mechanism can be used for this.

Implement an option that permits to edit a report's preferences 'before' elaborating the report

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107282

Create a Iphone Version.

Create a version that run in a Ipod Touch and Iphone.

GnuCash Wishlist

This page is intended as an edited list of enhancement requests for GnuCash. This page needs some heavy editing -- please go ahead, sort and regroup items as you think. Please read FAQ before adding new requests.

Some Wishlist items

• Reliability
  • Automatically detect GnuCash's logs for recovering after a crash
  • More reliable model for saving data in case of a crash (like Quickens transactional model) - Professor David DeWitt of University of Wisconsin Computer Science, a fairly prominent man in the database community, has said that he believes that this user level transactional behaviour, guaranteeing almost no loss of work, was one of the biggest factors in Quicken's success.
  • an intense reliability testing program, inserting errors and ensuring recovery.
• Stocks
  • Create one druid that will have to use when you create your commodity. This druid should create all the needed accounts for all possible actions (buy, sell, dividend, re-invest dividend, add shares, remove shares, etc) which are used by GnuCash's reports.
  • Create one or more other druids that will take care of the purchasing/selling/dividend etc transactions. Something like Money or Quicken. GnuCash should of course fill in the appropriate accounts in the background when you press apply.
• API Interface
  • See: QOF, the object persistence layer used by GnuCash; CashUtil, a stand-alone tool for manipulating GnuCash data; list of external software interfaces
• Better Invoice printing (including font choice and Fancy invoice customisation
  • Maybe output as RTF instead as HTML?

Commonly Requested Improvements

Minor items: Account Tree Fields, Reordering

• I would like to be able to see the Total value in the reporting currency as the leftmost field in the account tree. Of course, overall a general mechanism to specify field ordering in such displays.

• Be able to select more accounts at one time, making it possible to delete many accounts at once. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=343240
• Make the delete key (on the keyboard) work for deleting accounts.
• Be able to drag-and-drop accounts to another place http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121695
• When accounts are changed in the main window, the accounts in the transaction screen (general ledger?) are not updated.
• The - (minus) key on the keypad can not be used for entering dates, which is an annoyance.

End of financial year close issues

The standard way to run a set of books in a business is to enter transactions as they occur, or in batches daily or weekly, and then reconcile those transactions with statements and reports that come a few weeks later. For example, you may keep track of the deposits and withdrawals to a checking account on an event basis, but certain fees and adjustments may be missed until a bookkeeper receives the monthly bank statement, usually well into the next month, and reconciles the statement with the GL account.

Furthermore, many reports are performed after periods end, such as a monthly report on payroll to determine what tax to deposit, a quarterly report on payroll to complete government forms, and a full Income Statement (P&L) after a year has ended. These reports are inaccurate if performed during the period in question; they must necessarily be done afterwards, and often, after the period is reconciled.

This state of affairs requires that you keep your books for past periods open for a while before leaving them. Many accounting programs that limit your open history allow you to have 24 months open - 2 years - and support the ability to close the last calendar year when you are ready.

Imagine running your books - personal or business - to December 31. Now, you face January, and you want to be able to reconcile your statements for various accounts that will arrive in January for December or for October-December (Q4), and you want to be able to run reports on December, Q4, or the whole preceding year, for a little while, perhaps at least until tax day. However, you also want to be able to drop the last year after that, because the data takes up space and processing time, and you need not work with it all the time. You have a choice - you can open a new account and populate starting accounts, which is a nuisance and means you have to update the starting numbers any time you go back and change the old file, or you keep going in the same file and just accrue more and more data. The former is error-prone and the latter is slow.

What is needed is a built-in function of the application that can drop a chosen set of months at the beginning of the data set and summarize the activity into the starting balances for the remaining data so that an obsolete year can be cleanly dropped later on in the next year. This allows the application to support continous operation.

• This feature request is noted in Bugzillaas http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=106383 ; comments are probably better suited there so that they don't get forgotten.

--Katahdin 13:25, 28 February 2008 (EST) Why is closing a requirement? I still use DOS Quicken ver 8 with all the multiple daily transactions, cash, Credit cards, expenses for two business' - a restaurant and retail store - with 6 years worth of transactions - data,account, info @ 2.5 meg - it has immediate response time for data entry and even almost immediate response time for reports, YTD and "all data".

Choosing a customer or vendor when doing invoices or payments is clumsy

This also applies to choosing an invoice, and perhaps other things. As it is now, a user has to go to Business->Customers->Find Invoice, fill in search criteria, press the Find button, click an item in the results, and finally click the View/Edit Invoice button.

Why not instead make the path Business->Customers->Open Invoice, and open a dialog with a type-ahead search (similar to choosing accounts in the ledger fields) on the invoice number (or customer name, or vendor name, etc.) by default. A button somewhere in the dialog could open a more comprehensive search function.

Come to think of it, I'm almost always looking for unposted invoices in my books. So maybe a default dropdown list containing only unposted invoices? I guess a good way to summarize this RFE is to make opening a customer, vendor, invoice, etc. for editing a two-click operation -- maybe even a one-click operation if we add dropdowns to the toolbar (should be customizable).

It should be a top-level option to choose customer/vendor/invoice from a list - e.g. list invoices by customer, list all unpaid invoices for all customers. This could either be a menu inside an interface, like the Find window now does, or through (ideally) clickable reports (see below).

Language

I would maybe like to suggest as a requested feature that the language settings be part of the preferences menu option as a better way of setting the operating language of GnuCash. I would like to invoice clients in both French and English.

Debtors and Creditors

There has been repeated discussion around the way debtors and creditors (customers in vendors in non-accounting terms) are implemented. The following as needed for international markets, but I believe many US users also need them:

• The ability to create credit notes (the inverse of an invoice) for both vendors and customers. The is essential in real world business and changing invoices or bills to reflect credits is not an option. The accounting system should reflect what actually happened and when, not merely provide a summary. Allowing the entry of negative items in an invoice (resulting in a negative total amount) and well as negative payments would be an interim way of providing this.

• The need to allow manual allocation of payments to invoices (and selectively pay parts of a bill) is also required. Once an items is paid for many vendors or clients indicate final approval of the transaction, but refusal to pay for a specific item would indicate non-acceptance of the transaction. GnuCash must be able to reflect this. Simply allocating payments to the ordest invoice works fine in most cases, but where the real world differs from this, the system must be amended to allow for this, not the other way round.

• Related to previous is the case when the bank charge you for receiving money. Example, I have an invoice of 3,000 Euro, customer pays 3,000 Euro, but my bank keeps 10Euro as a wire receiving fee. I need to be able to split the payment then so the invoice will be paid in full towards accounts receivable, 2,900 will be booked on Asset - Bank Account, and 10 booked on Expense - Bank service charges. Currently you can't split accounts on processing payments, and the expense accounts doesn't show up at all.

• The lot number, indication which payment has been allocate to which invoice, should be exposed to a user. It will help, both when a customers reads a statement and when reading a vendor statement, tracking how payment were allocated.

Match Imported Transactions / Payees

Newly imported transactions should be matched to the correct account/category based on payee information and previous transaction memos. This is a feature that M$MONEY offers and is preventing me making the switch.

Scheduled Items Future Balance Predictor

Clumsy title, feel free to edit it. I would like to suggest that some way of predicting an account's balance after scheduled transactions have been paid/deposited be included. Quicken and Money both have this. It's a sort of halfway solution to a budget - it can be useful to know how much money will be left after your wages have been paid in and the standing orders for Electricity, Gas, Rent/Mortgage, etc., have been paid out. More importantly, a facility like this could tell you whether there will be money in an account to cover said costs or not. Quicken does this with a calendar that allows you to see the predicted balance on any particular day. Money has a graph that can predict the future value of an account. Both only take into account scheduled transactions that have been set up and that's what I have in mind. Could it be done in GnuCash?

A "pay now" or "enter now" option in the Scheduled Transaction Editor

I have repeatedly wished to be able to enter a scheduled transaction a little earlier than my setting. However, it is clumsy to do. How about a "pay now" or "enter now" option on "right click" and/or a button option above.

Special Interest Wishes

• Scanning and OCR of receipts/bills/paystubs
  • Sounds... interesting, but certainly not in the near future.
• Islamic Financial Calculations - support fort Zakah/Khums. - You know Muslims are supposed to pay a portion of their excess money every year to poor people. If this suggestion is approved we may need to start writing the formula needed to calculate the money someone should pay each year.

Implied Stock Price History

When I enter a Buy or Sell transaction, it should be possible for the price recorded to be automatically entered into the price history.

Perhaps only optionally, since occasionally the price in a transaction has no relationship to the fair market value on that day. But at least optionally, since often it does.

Why not just store the stock quote as a buy/sell price. When you update the stock quote at the end of the day, you will get a Last Quote entry. If this is implemented, then when you import QIF files with stock purchase/sell your pricedb should be automatically updated with these prices.

-- Bengt 20060405

Multiple Views - not just hierarchical account tree

Gnu Cash's arbitrarily nested account tree is a wonderful improvement over Quicken's accounts and categories. Deep hierarchy capability is better than 2 level hierarchy. But multiple hierarchical views is better still.

For example, one typically has several accounts associated with a piece of property, say /Asset/Real-Estate/Property1, /Expense/Real-Estate/Property1, /Liability/Real-Estate/Property1/First-Mortgage, etc. Sometimes one wants to roll things up by asset/expense/liablity; sometimes one wants to look at /Property1/{Asset,Expense,Liability}; i.e. one often wants to pivot path elements in the tree.

One of the big reasons that I want to use Gnu Cash is the hope that I can code up this sort of flexible viewing of accounts and data.

Another examples: source of account / type of account / company holding account. I have several accounts that are associated with different employers, past and present: e.g. Motorola/401K, Motorola/Pension, Motorola/ESPP, Intel/401K, Intel/SERP, Intel/ESPP, Intel/Options AMD/401K, AMD/ProfitSharing, AMD/ESPP, AMD/Options. Sometimes I want to see these by company. At other times I want to see these by type - e.g. 401K/{Motorola,Intel,AMD}, Options/{Intel,AMDD} etc.

Similarly, some of these accounts are managed by various of the big finanicial firms. E.g. AMD/Options is managed by eTrade OptionsLink. But I also have two other eTrade accounts. Intel/401K is currently managed by Fidelity, although it has been managed by other companies in the past. But I have Fidelity accounts from several other sources. Sometimes I want to look at all of my Fidelity accounts at the same time

Fidelity/Intel/401K Fidelity/Motorola/Options

but note: it is not meaningful to place the admin in the path, since at any point in time Amd/Options only has eTrade as the admin.

Sounds useful to me. You might also want to look into reports. --Rolf 15:29, 12 July 2008 (EDT)

Another way would be to have a configurable dashboard. A single page that shows some important accounts for you and some other information like ratios (e.g. Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable or Long_term_loans/Long_term_investments. There should be a ratio or formula editor to create this other information. --User:chonwell , October 4 2008

Change Tracking

Accounts get sold from one company to another. Employers change the administrators of retirement accounts - today it's Fiddelity, tomorrow eTrade. Even within the same company, account numbers get changed: eTrade renumbered everyone last September.

It would be good if Gnu Cash allowed us to keep track of such changes. Instead of just a single account number, it might allow the account number to be versioned. Similarly contact info.

Myself, I like wikis - link to arbitrary text, perhaps with particular fields. Or, the model of old InfoCentral: an account is a relationship between a company like Fidelity and a human. There may be multiple such relationships. Relationships don't last forever.

I don't think gnucash should become a wiki. Use a wiki or a vcs if that is what you want. You could even track the gnucash file in a vcs if that is what you want. Clear vote: gnucash stay focused! --Rolf 15:37, 12 July 2008 (EDT)

Attaching Images to Transactions

I would like to see the ability to attach images to transaction items. --Wookie 12:31, 6 January 2007 (EST)

At first I was skeptical if this is something that gnucash should support, but after visiting the bug report in above link, I found that indeed storing the receipt along the transaction makes a lot of sense. --Rolf 15:37, 12 July 2008 (EDT)I believe gnucash should only store the information

I just wanted to reinforce the need for this feature. In many countries and for many purposes, we need to keep documents that corroborate transactions and can make prove of them if asked for. For me, this is a must have feature. --lseabra 22:56, 11 March 2009

As learned with paper and pen, I use an alphanumerical code as transaction number to refer to document n in folder x. But you could also enter the URL of your document in the comment line in the transaction; only 2 clicks to move the address in your browser. Fell 01:14, 12 March 2009 (EDT)

QIF Import Wishlist Items

I'd like to see a screen in the QIF import wizard that works like so: "Find all transactions with ARBYS in the DESCRIPTION and assign those transactions as a transfer to category Expenses:Dining." GnuCash would then show the transactions it had matched and I'd be able to exclude ones that didn't correctly match. Inanutshellus 14:06, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

Usability WishList

Movement of Entries Within Date Grouping

The ability to move entries up or down within a grouping of entries of the same date (i.e. time of day order). When transactions are made over the course of a day, their order may differ from official bank records. When comparing personal accounting records with official bank records, it's highly annoying that balances are not in the same order. It makes it tedious to find errors too, and in hunting errors down one is forced to re-order transactions by changing the date just to put them in the proper order of time-of-day. But if there are many transactions on many days in a row, one cannot simply change the date one day ahead or back as there could be a dozen items that need to be sorted.

General interface look and feel

I would like to see the main elements of the interface (toolbars, account pages for example) get improved look and feel. As a creative professional working in interface design field I would like to work with someone to make this happen. I believe it could be made easier to use and more attractive and help encourage users who are used to MS Money for example. If interested in working on this contact: email(at)olmec.co.nz

Move close button to tabs

Personally I'd like Edit->Preferences->General->"Show close button on notebook tabs" to be enabled by default, and have that option remove the 'big' Close button. Input from a usability expert is desired.

I agree with this, it would behave more like other programs as we have come to expect.

Closing tab should focus the next tab to the left

Closing tabs in gnucash has unexpected behavior: focus is shifted to the first tab. To be consistent with other tabbed applications (e.g., Mozilla), focus should shift to the tab immediately to the left. The current behavior makes it cumbersome to close a bunch of tabs in a row--you close the tab, and then need to move to the next open tab, then close, repeat, etc..

User:jsled: The focus shifts to the last-selected tab; there is a stack of recently-visited tabs.

Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown Should Move Between Tabs Regardless of Focus

Similar to the previous suggestion, it should be possible to move between tabs without having to switch the focus to the tab bar. As in Mozilla, Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown should cycle through the tabs. (This works now if you first click on one of the tabs, but it should work even if the cursor focus is in the main window).

+1 from me --Rolf 15:50, 12 July 2008 (EDT)

Invoice duplication option

I have a lot of invoices in which the items stay the same, only the prices change. An example is my phone bill. It always has the basic phone charge, and the long distance charges, the only thing that changes each month is how much long distance.

+100! It's a critical reason why I don't adopt Gnucash for my Business accounting! I have 10-15 main suppliers that each one provide me -by invoice- about 10 to 20 standard products (belonging to different spend 'categories'/accounts). I believe is a matter of S/M (!) to retype every week the same products, assigning them again to the same accounts/categories, to do your job ! --CSioulis 08:41, 21 August 2008 (EDT)

Allow Sorting of Columns in Import Window

While importing QFX data for example the "Generic import transaction matcher" window presents "Date", "Amount", Description" columns to name a few. Dates are out of order, so are the descriptions. It would be nice to sort columns (at least date and description) by clicking on the column header.

This is already done in other windows; for example, the "Select Account" window that pops up when a transaction is double-clicked from the import window.

This has only been tested on Windows v. 2.1.2.

Real-time report updates

Any "Search" seems to do this correctly, because it behaves like an account window, but when I generate a report and then change something in a transaction or account that is reflected in the report, the report does not automatically update itself with the new information. This smacks a bit of a tougher architectural problem, not easily solved, but still.

'Invoice' name

Whether a business is a VAT payer or not, some countries (eg. Lithuania) require Invoices to be named as an 'Invoice', or 'VAT-Invoice'. This should be possible to be set by user - not the translator.

Memorized invoice line item descriptions

When creating a new invoice, each item on the invoice must have its description, Income Account, price, discount,tax, etc. entered manually. There should be a way to have these "products" memorized. This way, every line item can be quickly recalled and reduce errors and inconsistencies associated with repeated data entry.

API for creating invoices

An API should be developed that would allow invoices to be created via an external application. This would include creating and printing invoices. This would allow other applications that manage inventory, automatic billing etc to create the required invoices. For example, a client is billed every month based on the amount of services they use. This amount varies from month to month. A 3rd party application tracks their usage and the communicates with GnuCash to generate the required invoice.

Scheduled / Recurring Invoices

The ability to have recurring invoices would be very useful. For example, my organisation (a charity) are using invoices for requests for payment of membership fees. These need to be issued annually/monthly.

Account Codes

I would like to see an option whereby in the account transactions and transaction report tabs account listing and selection can be by account code rather than account name. I use an intuitive -- at least for me, as I have been using it in other accounting applications -- alphabetic account coding system where for example A is the code for the ASSETS top level account, AC is for Assets, Current, etc. I would find this option much easier than trying to remember account names. Kenswimmer 05:07, 24 February 2009 (EST)

Reports and Charts

Cash Flow Report

I expected the cash flow report to take into account all available data, including scheduled transactions. While it shows transactions already entered for a future date, it does not add those which have not yet been posted. Which makes it no better than the account register; you might as well not have the report.

So, I thought, I'll just post the scheduled transactions in advance. If there's a way to do that, I can't find it. Stymied.

Customer Report

A report which shows only those invoices which are unpaid, or at least one which excludes which specifically are paid.

Expanded pie charts

Expanded pie charts, like those used in jDiskReport and the GNOME Disk Usage Analyzer would be great. Expanded pie charts are wonderful for displaying a great deal of information, especially when you have a carefully-created hierarchy. For example, consider the following accounts:

Income

• Salary
  • Employer1
  • Employer2
• Bonuses
• Other Income

Expenses

• Transportation
  • Bicycle
  • Auto
• Rent

Rather than have to choose between the 2nd and 3rd level of reports, I'd like to see both the second and third level simultaneously. This is the whole point of expanded pie charts. If I haven't made myself clear, please let me know, and I'll provide a screenshot here. --Jcarroll 20:24, 20 December 2008 (EST)

WONTFIX

Just in order to avoid any ambiguities, we'll move any wishlist item that definitely won't be implemented in gnucash into this section. ("won't be implemented" means: "will for sure not be implemented by any of the current developers"; if anyone starts the implementation himself, he/she is free to do so.)

Use through web browser

I am just starting a small business and I am trying to set up all of my business to be run remotely. This is because as the business expands all my employees will be working remotely. That, and I don't want my business reying on everyone using the same OS. So, I have a content management system and project management system that are hosted elsewhere and can both be accessed through a browser. The next wish is financial management run the same way. Gnucash is the closest I've seen to being exactly what I need.. if only I could access it through a browser.

We're sorry, but this "wish" would basically require to write a completely new program. GnuCash has been designed as a normal Desktop application from ground up, and it is completely impossible to adapt this into a webserver-based application. If you're really looking for a server-based software, SQLedger might be much more suited for your needs. In GnuCash, this won't happen (WONTFIX). See also some gnucash-devel discussion in April/May. --Cstim 04:56, 9 October 2006 (EDT)

If I recall correctly, gnucash was, by policy, never going to be available on MS Windows either. I would also very much like to move all my financial activity to web-based applications, but I do recognize the difficulty and potential risk. No hurry, no complaint, and thanks for the MS Windows version.Doolin 10:24, 29 September 2007 (EDT)

Hmm... speak for yourself. I'd love to expose (specific) functionality through a web interface. As well, it's not at all "completely impossible"; UIs should just be UIs over application logic. At the same time, I'm not actively working towards this goal right now, and there's a lot of distance between here and there. ---jsled

I'm really new to this all but I'd love to see some sort of online interface also. Possibly not fully powered, but enough where you could enter a transaction. Let's say you're out of town and use your debit card, go home, log in, create the transaction and when you get back home, everything is updated. Or your at a cafe with WiFi, take out your PDA, get online, browse to your site, and enter the transaction for the mocha you just bought. I think it would be very useful to help keep track of cash purchases and such. Being new, I'm not sure of the possibilities, but would you be able to use PHP with the QOF (see List of external software interfaces) library to update GNUCash? Has this been tried? (Or if Postgres support was better, PHP directly to Postgres) Any thoughts? --met1205 20:14, 2 March 2007 (EST)

QOF doesn't know anything about GnuCash internals ... think of QOF as somethhttp://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2007-March/019720.htmling like glib. The best approach would be to use the SWIG bindings to get at the gnucash "engine" via your favorite scripting language. Jsled 11:45, 3 March 2007 (EST)

The recently announced Python bindings could be a good start in the direction of a web interface. --Bastiaan 10:34, 21 March 2007 (EDT)

You could also have a look at jGnucashLib. It can read+write and has a jGnucashEditor with scripting and plugins. --MarcusWolschon 16:01, 30 September 2008 (EDT)

One of my favorite features of Quicken was WebEntry, which let users enter transactions in a web browser for later download to Quicken. I'd like to build a lightweight (mobile-friendly) web interface that can turn user input into data suitable for import into GNUCash. J2xl 13:01, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

If I want to use an application via a web browser, I simply run VNC. The Gnucash developers should spend their time on the financial and usability stuff, not on re-inventing the web interface. This is similar to the encrypted file issue. As a related issue, if you are starting a business and intend to do much work remotely, you should consider using a server in a co-location facility, because you will generally get much better network connectivity, better backup and recovery, and easy expansion. -Arch dude 15:34, 11 May 2008 (EDT)