2008-10-05 GnuCash IRC logs
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00:08:44 <rarsa> thanks
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06:45:34 <a> Hi people. I am using gnucash and am quite happy with it. There is though one thign which I never managed: how to display the result of all operations on a given account through the given period of time? assume I have an expenses account #chips and I want to know how much I spent there from 1 january 08 to 5 october 08, what should I do?
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08:17:57 <FrancIsKo> hello
08:18:01 <FrancIsKo> anyone?
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08:21:41 <FrancIsKo> hi
08:22:04 <FrancIsKo> R U there?
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08:28:56 <warlord> Geeze! You wait a whole FIVE MINUTES, FrancIsKo?? At 8am on a Sunday?
08:29:19 <warlord> At least "a" lasted longer.. 30 minutes around 7am. *sigh*
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09:40:34 <overrider> hello, i've setup some common accounts and a value for my opening balance. now when i started entering in item expenses for example for Gas or Mobilephone Fees, i see that in the Bottom Window Status Bar it says Profit: and the summarized Value of all the few Expenses i have been adding. Am i doing something wrong already? Why would the Sum of my Expenses be Profit? Thanks
09:45:02 <warlord> are you sure you didn't enter your expenses backwards?
09:52:35 <overrider> warlord, under the accounts tab, i have an account with money (Cash in Wallet). I double clicked it, and its details opened in a new tab. there i entered into individual rows a short Description, selected the Expenses:Utilities:Rent Account, and entered a money Value into the "Spend" Field. Is that wrong?
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09:53:05 <overrider> I think it is okay, because the "Balance" Value in the most right Column goes down
09:54:11 <warlord> Yeah, that is correct.
09:55:15 <overrider> And when i enter in a Value for Income:Salary, Value inside Receive, the Balance goes up, and the Profits on the Main Screen Bottom Status Bar goes down.
09:59:29 <warlord> I have no idea how the Status Bar computes its values.
10:02:27 <Bjarte> overrider, what dates do you use for the opening balances and entered expense/income entries?
10:03:25 <cortana> the status bar has often given me nonsensical data too :)
10:04:03 <overrider> Bjarte, actually, i recorded the Opening Balance when i setup the Initial Accounts using the Druid, so i think it used todays Date. The other things i recorded when they happened, eg, i entered values starting from the 1st of this month until today
10:09:01 <Bjarte> Might be a bug where transactions are entered before the opening balance. Try adjusting the date of the opening balances account to 10/01.
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10:21:05 <Bjarte> Has anyone had any luck getting the automatic update of quotes to work on WinXP? When I enter the command gnucash --add-price-quotes %USERPROFILE%\gnucash-filename, I get an unexpected operation error and the program terminates.
10:21:44 <warlord> Bjarte: try running it from the Get Quotes button from the Security Editor in the UI?
10:22:13 <Bjarte> That works, but I'd like to setup a task to have it do this nightly.
10:22:24 <warlord> on WINDOWS?
10:22:30 <Bjarte> Yes
10:22:35 <warlord> Good luck.
10:22:49 <warlord> What happens if you try giving it a full path instead of %USERPROFILE%
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10:26:22 <Bjarte> That worked. The command would add a \ before the filename. When I entered the full path using / it was fine. Thanks!
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10:29:21 <warlord> there ya go
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12:52:38 <unixSnob> are there any plugins or addons for gnucash? Or some way of getting a way to categorize expenses?
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12:55:03 <warlord> what do you mean "categorize expenses"? What's wrong with the current standard expense account hierarchies?
12:55:51 <unixSnob> warlord: when I created an account, and entered a transaction, there was no field for me to specify a category, like "groceries"
12:56:07 <unixSnob> it also did not give me a field for payee
12:56:30 <unixSnob> and it created a deposit in the same amount, with the same description, when there was no deposit like that
12:56:44 <warlord> unixSnob: so when you created the file you didn't choose any expense accounts.
12:56:49 <unixSnob> I tried to delete the bogus deposit, and it also deleted the expense
12:56:52 <warlord> (through the new file hierarchy druid)
12:57:25 <warlord> What do you mean "field for payee"?
12:57:44 <warlord> That's a quicken term.
12:57:53 <warlord> In GnuCash it's called Description.
12:58:02 <unixSnob> warlord: you mean when I did a 'save as..'? There was no option for expense accounts.
12:58:28 <warlord> No.... When you did "File -> New -> New File"
12:58:31 <unixSnob> warlord: where would I enter the description of the purchase then, if "description" is used for the payee?
12:59:08 <warlord> Please stop thinking in quicken terms. It will just spoil your brain.
12:59:44 <warlord> Note that much of what you need to know is either in the payee or the expense account.
12:59:55 <warlord> If you need additional detail you could put it into the notes or memo fields.
13:00:10 <warlord> have you read the gnucash docs?
13:00:14 <warlord> (and the wiki/faq?)
13:01:10 <unixSnob> i started to read the docs, and noticed that "categories" were replaced with something else.. the docs didn't seem useful in that regard
13:01:47 <warlord> read it again.
13:02:08 <warlord> income and expense categories map to income and expense accounts.
13:02:34 <warlord> Please, go read the docs. They are quite good, and they really do explain all this. Go spend a couple hours reading; it will be time well spent.
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16:24:24 <lynx> can I download historical price quotes?
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16:43:58 <jsled> lynx: no.
16:45:19 <lynx> I was looking around the internet, and saw requests for it from years ago. Are there plans to ever add it?
16:45:46 <jsled> whenever someone writes it.
16:46:38 <lynx> thx
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17:21:23 <twunder> there's a buttn on the Toolbar that allows you to create a scheduled transaction from the transaction you happen to be on. How hard would it be to make that button perform the Since Last Run... dialog instead?
17:23:32 <jsled> easy. or, adding another button
17:28:13 <twunder> easy, but not user accessible. right?
17:28:55 <twunder> just seems to make more sense since one would tend to need to run the SLR more often than create a new SX
17:29:04 <twunder> to have that on the Toolbar
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18:26:50 <jandrews> I'd like to integrate my GnuCash data with a PHP application. Has anyone ever worked on PHP bindings? If not, would anyone be willing to point me in the right direction?
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19:09:29 <jandrews> Let me try a more specific question: is there a source example somewhere of how I could programmatically retrieve an account listing from GnuCash through a C API call?
19:14:02 <cortana> jandrews: you might have better luck on the mailing lists
19:16:42 <jandrews> cortana: thanks, I'll jump on there next. I'm still reading through the code and trying to answer the question myself.
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19:27:46 <Robyn> Hoping someone's here. Vista gave me the Blue Screen and now my GNUcash data file is *gone*
19:28:19 <Robyn> need to know if there's a way to recover it, or a back up, & where to find & how to open
19:28:35 <cortana> backups are kept in the same directory as the data file i believe
19:28:51 <cortana> their filename ends in .xac
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19:38:45 <Robyn2> I think I hate how Vista seems to hate free software. Can someone boot my old nick Robyn?
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19:40:09 <Robyn> never mind, I figured out the problem.
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19:42:04 <Robyn> thank you cortana, I found it.
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23:11:42 <overrider> hello there. can someone tell me why when i transfer funds from my "Cash in Wallet" Account to "Expenses:Utilities:Gas" Account, the Amount i transfered shows up as "Profits" in the lower bottom right Status Bar located on the Main Window? thanks
23:15:45 *** warlord-afk is now known as warlord
23:16:00 <warlord> overrider: you might have better luck just looking at the code.
23:16:18 <overrider> warlord, really
23:16:30 <warlord> yes
23:16:47 <overrider> warlord, i thought someone would be able to explain what Profits mean in that context. i dont think it is a bug
23:16:49 <warlord> none of the current devs worked on that code
23:17:10 <warlord> increased expenses should not increase profits.
23:19:44 <overrider> scary really; could it be that somewhere along the road my numbers get screwed as well...horrible thought really, for small business people as well as home financial control
23:23:18 <warlord> personally i ignore the status bar completely
23:23:34 <overrider> lol
23:24:47 <overrider> its the first and immediate impression you get about how much money you have
23:25:56 <warlord> really? I think the CoA numbers are more visible
23:55:03 <overrider> does it matter for my homefinances if i either enter in a value for opening balance for the money i have in my wallet, or just record it as initial income after i already created my accounts?
23:55:29 <warlord> Yes, that matters
23:55:51 <overrider> profit has something to do with that as well; a Income:Salary entry will increase the profit, but entering in a inital opening balance for my Cash in wallet account does not
23:56:24 <overrider> hence, actually the problem was not the profit increasing, it went down. Profit was displayed using () , so i guess that is minus
23:58:15 <overrider> because lets say: my opening balance is 10k (because the 1st of this month it was). Then i enter in all my expenses for the past few days. Result is, the little Profit thingy is like 3k in the Minus.
23:58:41 <warlord> that is correct.
23:58:49 <overrider> hm
23:58:54 <warlord> yes () is a negative
23:59:03 <overrider> can you give a tip about what is the normal way to enter in the initial stuff going backwards a few days? I wanted to start on the 1st of October entering in my things
23:59:37 <warlord> If you want to start accounting on 10/1, then enter all your opening balances as of 9/30 as transactions to/from Equity
23:59:54 <overrider> ah