2009-02-22 GnuCash IRC logs

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00:30:04 <Rain> I'm going to flog what is probably a long-dead horse, but are there any plans to incorporate a standard reconciliation report in GnuCash? I've experimented with GC, but a standard reconciliation report is a required submission report in many bookkeeping scenarios, and the lack of such a standardized report is the only thing keeping me from using the program. It's a bit of a glaring omission on the part of the developers, IMO.
00:31:08 <gxti> i'm sure they didn't do it just to spite you.
00:32:37 <Rain> Heh. I'm sure,too, but I don't understand the omission. It's so... necessary in the bookkeeping world that it boggles my mind. There's a reason Quicken, QuickBooks, Peachtree, etc., include that report in their programs. It's required by many.
00:34:12 <Rain> It goes to the accountability of the bookkeeper. You don't want your Board of Directors or whatever traipsing through your computer to look at the reconciliation screen. You hand them the report.
00:40:32 <goodger_> Rain: it is very difficult to produce reports in gnucash that are flexible yet specific
00:41:47 <goodger_> there are very many regulatory and standardization bodies throughout the world
00:42:07 <Rain> Doesn't need to be flexible. It just needs to produce what is considered standard in such a report. If you've ever used other programs, you know that reconciliation reports are one click reports.
00:42:34 <goodger_> the consideration of what is standard varies from user to user
00:42:55 <goodger_> therefore, flexibility is required, or else you will end up requiring one report per regulatory body
00:43:33 <harlan> is there a useful superset that will cover most/all of the cases?
00:44:01 <Rain> I'm not arguing that, necessarily, but we're talking about a report that is so ubiquitous in the accounting world that not having it is like a one-legged man trying to compete in a regular marathon.
00:44:52 <goodger_> Rain: frankly, I have never heard of it
00:45:09 <Rain> Do you do bookkeeping? Professionally, I mean?
00:45:17 <goodger_> bookkeeping, yes
00:45:18 <goodger_> accounting, no
00:46:07 <Rain> Bookkeeping is just a toned-down version of accounting. The only difference is bookkeepers typically don't deal with all the tax law and whatnot.
00:46:17 <goodger_> I prepare the books and internal reports, and the books are passed to a much more qualified accountant for accounts to be produced
00:46:52 <goodger_> yes, I am aware of that
00:46:55 <Rain> Ah. Well, I do both the bookkeeping and the reports, so the lack of a reconciliation report hamstrings me terribly.
00:48:04 <Rain> I want to move to Linux, but this is the only thing stalling me. I can't find an accounting program in linux that will let me do what I need to do. I've got an old 1999 version of Quicken that suits my needs better than GC for no other reason that it produces a reconciliation report.
00:48:06 <goodger_> I see
00:49:17 <goodger_> a cash flow / profit & loss reconciliation report?
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00:49:32 <Rain> It's probably the single most important report in that it shows that all my financial ducks are in a row to my clients.
00:49:46 <Rain> No, bank statement reconciliation report.
00:49:46 <goodger> I remember those from accounting in college, we used them very infrequently
00:50:15 <goodger> er
00:50:17 <Rain> I do non-profit, so we don't deal in profit/loss very much.
00:50:27 <goodger> have you tried Actions -> Reconcile ?
00:50:43 <Rain> Sure, but that doesn't generate a report.
00:51:15 <Rain> That just reconciles your accounts on the computer, right?
00:52:09 <gxti> perhaps if you described what was on this report...
00:52:12 <goodger> it doesn't seem to produce anything printable
00:52:21 <Rain> Hmmm. I can send you something. Gimme a sec...
00:52:43 <goodger> ...I'm going to bed, it's nearly six in the morning
00:53:07 <harlan> goodger: you sound like me, but I try and be in bed before 0500.
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00:55:08 <Rain> Well, goodger, I'm trying to send you a 3K text file that shows a standard bank statement reconciliation.
00:55:33 <Rain> buuuuuut, he's not accepting. Oh, well.
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00:57:43 <gxti> pastebin.com?
00:58:27 <gxti> that works too, i guess
00:58:31 <Rain> :)
01:01:34 <gxti> being familiar with neither the internal workings of gnucash nor basic accounting practices, i'm probably not the best person to figure out whether this is workable
01:02:58 <gxti> just looking at the data file, it seems like it does keep track of when something was reconciled
01:03:29 <gxti> certainly, it knows *right now* what isn't cleared
01:03:34 <Rain> Basically, the report summarizes the totals for your cleared transactions, allowing you to show reconciliation with your bank statement, and then factors in uncleared transactions, allowing you to show reconciliation with your check register, and then proceeds to give a detail of uncleared transactions. This seems pretty standard across the board with all other accounting programs I've experimented with.
01:05:06 <gxti> the "uncleared transaction" part should be easy since it's a point-in-time listing of all the txns that aren't cleared (obviously)
01:05:20 <gxti> but i'm not sure that there's enough info to show specific reconciliations
01:05:57 <gxti> well, you could pick a date range and hope it matches what your bank claims happened between those dates, but that doesn't sound quite right
01:06:05 <Rain> Yeah, it has to generate all the necessary math for that first section.
01:06:24 <Rain> No, that won't work because of cleared, uncleared overlap.
01:06:25 <gxti> it *does* do that when you reconcile, the problem is getting a report sometime afterwards
01:06:34 <Rain> Right.
01:06:53 <gxti> gnucash does store the time each split was reconciled
01:07:18 <gxti> so the overlap issue is more about whether that date agrees with the bank statement
01:07:30 <Rain> Transaction split? Seems to be putting the cart before the horse. The split isn't really at issue here.
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01:08:30 <gxti> each split is reconciled separately
01:08:32 <Rain> Er, no, it means once you've done the math with the cleared and uncleared transactions, you can show reconciliation with both the bank statement and the check register.
01:09:56 <Rain> It's weird. I guess it's possibly just a regional thing. I gather GC is more a European item than American. I dunno. But it's a fatal roadblock for me, nonetheless.
01:10:15 <gxti> it would be possible to say "between date X and date Y, these 3 payments and these 4 deposits were reconciled"
01:11:05 <Rain> Mmmm, no, that alone doesn't get me where I need to be. It has to involve starting and ending balances of the bank statement and the ending balance of the check register.
01:11:26 <gxti> surely some existing report covers the ending balances
01:11:35 <gxti> it's shown right at the bottom of the account register
01:11:49 <Rain> Yeah. It's called a reconciliation report. :D
01:12:46 <Rain> But the problem is that your account register rarely jives with your ending bank balance because of cleared/uncleared transaction overlap. That's where this report comes in, does the math, and shows that everything is cool.
01:13:16 <gxti> i think it would be plausible to have this report; it's not like there's a big missing piece
01:14:00 <Rain> Well, it could certainly be done by hand, but if I have to do that, then there's no point in bothering with the program.
01:14:57 <Rain> How many hoops would I have to jump through with the program just to get to the same place as that simple one-click report I sent you?
01:15:52 <gxti> pick a date range, defaulting to "today onwards", then show the balance of txns reconciled before that range, individual txns reconciled during that range, and the resulting reconciled balance after those txns
01:16:21 <Rain> And the uncleared items so that the check register will balance?
01:16:41 <gxti> yes, everything reconciled after the date range or not reconciled at all would be considered uncleared
01:17:05 <gxti> or unreconciled at least. there's a distinction between cleared and reconciled, and i'm not sure how that would play in here.
01:17:27 <Rain> I feel like we're trying to twist GC into a balloon animal just to get it to do that.
01:17:58 <gxti> as goodger said, there's not much point if it's completely inflexible
01:19:03 <Rain> Heh. My perspective is that GC is being inflexible by not allowing an available avenue for that, but that's just my opinion.
01:20:31 <Rain> I would've thought someone might have cobbled together a macro or something for GC for just such a purpose, but I can't find anything about it. Basically what I find when I Google on the key words is that it can't be done.
01:20:50 <gxti> i'd help write said report, but i know nothing about how it's done
01:21:09 <gxti> interesting that it seems to be so widely missed and yet unwritten
01:21:23 <Rain> Eh. S'all right. Wasn't looking for a project, really. Just was wondering, so I thought I'd stop by and jaw about it a while.
01:21:49 <Rain> Yeah, there are some discussions on the web about the fact that GC doesn't provide such a report. I'm not alone in this.
01:23:16 <Rain> To the best of my knowledge, it's pretty standard here to attach the kind of report I sent you to your bank statement for filing and accountability.
01:23:44 <Rain> It's one of the things I have to present monthly to show that all the money balances.
01:25:03 <Rain> Well, I'm off. Thanks for the chat. Time for bed for me, too. Midnight-thirty here.
01:25:10 <Rain> Ciao.
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10:57:30 <Zelroy> How can you change GnuCash's UI language in Windows?
10:58:56 <andi5> edit bin\gnucash.bat and add "LANG=fr" as last but last one line (before start) ... fr would be french, do you know your two-letter language code?
10:59:15 <andi5> maybe fi then
10:59:25 <Zelroy> Yes, and thanks!
11:00:04 <andi5> oh, set LANG= ...
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11:10:50 <cast|lir> hmmm
11:11:54 <cast|lir> question: ive listed a cheque written prior to my record of accounts and cashed after the start of my record of accounts as an Expense, is that reasonable? am wondering if it should have been a liability instead, but dont really want to change it now
11:12:22 * cast|lir just has a Expenses:Cheques from last year account
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12:15:47 <jeopardy> Hi, folks!
12:16:55 <jeopardy> Here i'm jeopardy
12:19:57 <jeopardy> Where i did go/
12:20:06 <jeopardy> where id did go
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12:46:59 <andi5> warlord-afk: ping
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14:16:36 <warlord> andi5: pong
14:17:09 <andi5> i am trying to resolve this make check problem
14:17:15 <andi5> and i need assistence :)
14:17:57 <warlord> cast|lir: if you wrote it prior to T0 then I just wouldn't include it at all.
14:18:27 <warlord> ... because the opening balance at T0 in the checking account would have already included the check having been cashed, even if it hadn't.
14:19:02 <andi5> first of all, in the 20th run, the HUF currency is picked and added to the table... due to the changed fraction, a different code path is used for a while and all subsequent random numbers change... that is why we have a problem 20 runs later, at least it is related ;-)
14:19:10 <warlord> Your other option is to predate the check, (prior to T0, effectively moving T0 to earlier) and then you can either include it as an expense or as Equity.. it doesn't matter, especially if T0 is the start of a Period.
14:19:42 <warlord> Different code path because 1 v. 100?
14:19:43 <andi5> ok, it is added to the table earlier but used in that run...
14:19:46 <warlord> Interesting...
14:19:47 <andi5> yes
14:20:07 <andi5> two currencies are compared and if their scu differs... do something
14:20:17 <warlord> Part of me thinks that "get_random_xxx()" needs to be fixed to provide more "reasonable" (realistic) numbers.
14:20:24 <andi5> yep
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14:21:20 <andi5> ok, so does http://svn.gnucash.org/trac/browser/gnucash/branches/2.2/src/engine/test-core/test-engine-stuff.c#L955 look reasonable to you?
14:21:49 <warlord> firefox crashed, so give me 15 minutes before I can look at that URL.
14:21:55 <andi5> lol
14:22:19 <andi5> there is something called editor..
14:23:02 <andi5> so i think that line is bogus, and changed it to amt instead... now test-lots fails a lot earlier ;-)
14:24:14 <warlord> Um, yeah, that should be amt
14:24:29 <andi5> then i wondered about http://svn.gnucash.org/trac/browser/gnucash/branches/2.2/src/engine/test-core/test-engine-stuff.c#L1313 ... multiplying a number that may be 2^47 by a rate that may be 2^5 completely ignores the 2^48 check in get_random_gnc_numeric()
14:25:32 <andi5> but all i tried so far makes test-lots cry about lots being too thin
14:26:18 <warlord> I suspect the issue is a rounding or overflow.
14:26:30 <andi5> yes
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14:27:21 <andi5> amt equal to val probably made the world a lot easier :)
14:28:26 <warlord> Probably........
14:33:23 <andi5> honestly, i cannot / do not want to look at this issue anymore today
14:33:38 <andi5> to get the release out soon, i wonder we might want to disable the check for 2.2.9?
14:33:45 <andi5> +whether
14:43:04 <warlord> I'm pretty confident that the test itself is broken, so I'm comfortable with you commenting out the test, cutting the release, and then after the release goes out re-enabling the tets.
14:43:16 <warlord> Keep in mind that this test does not break in trunk...
14:43:37 <andi5> yes, would be a branch-only and 2.2.9-only action
14:44:41 <andi5> great... i will not manage the whole procedure today/tonight, so will do that tomorrow... see you!
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21:01:38 <cast|lir> warlord-afk: hmm, thats a good idea
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21:02:40 <warlord> :-D
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