2010-05-11 GnuCash IRC logs

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10:22:45 <jsled> warlord: do you have a policy about editing the gnucash-mailing list archives? someone (US) wants their name removed from the archives; I'd like to say "no, as a matter of policy". :)
10:53:31 <warlord> that's the policy
10:53:36 <warlord> we dont control all the archives.
10:57:04 <jsled> and he really wants the two instances of his name removed from "google".
10:58:05 <warlord> nothing we can do about that.
10:58:11 <warlord> we dont control google
11:03:57 <jsled> of course.
11:15:37 <warlord> My answer has always been "sorry, we dont modify the archives."
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12:24:12 <mezimezim> I there, I'd like to know, how do I "end", or "close" a year, i.e. a fiscal year ?
12:25:13 <warlord> Tools -> Close Books.
12:25:22 <warlord> (Me, I dont do anything special at all)
12:26:06 <mezimezim> I have opened my gnucash file in KmyMoney and it clearly showed the transaction that had been done in the last fiscal year, but in gnucash, I don't see that
12:26:36 <warlord> Maybe in gnucash you have it set to only show transactions in the current period?
12:27:10 <mezimezim> I gnucash, I can see EVERYTHING, but it does not tell me what's in what period
12:29:17 <mezimezim> In preferences, when setting the fiscal year, I would like to tell the program that the fiscal year is from January 1st until december 31st, but I can't do it this way, i.e., I have to specify a year
12:29:33 <mezimezim> how can I do it so it just knows, no matter the year?
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12:40:56 <warlord> GnuCash has no concept of "period". It only knows about dates.
12:41:18 <warlord> There's an open bug for that
12:41:25 <warlord> ... those settings are only used by reports.
12:41:46 <mezimezim> OK, I see
12:43:43 <mezimezim> In my French translation, it does say under preferences "Période comptable", so that is the bug, since Gnucash does not treat the info as "period" ? Do I understand well?
12:44:35 <warlord> The REPORTS treat that as the period, when the reports are configured to report on the period.
12:45:15 <mezimezim> OK
12:45:29 <warlord> However transactions are not tied to a period, the period is computed based on the transaction date.
12:46:10 <warlord> If the period were a separate flag then you could, say, have a transaction dated Dec 31 that really falls into the period that started jan 1.. But you cannot do that in Gnucahs.
12:46:13 <warlord> GnuCash
12:46:48 <mezimezim> Now I see!
12:46:52 <warlord> Also, the period setting in the preferences does not control what you see in the register. Closing the books just adds a balancing transaction to Income and Expense to zerioze those accounts.
12:47:11 <warlord> It does nothing else. It's nothing special. You could add those zeroizing transactions by hand if you wanted.
12:47:29 <warlord> The reports work just fine without those transactions in place
12:51:31 <mezimezim> OK, that's nice of you to explain all this!
12:52:58 <mezimezim> I tried using KmyMoney for a few minutes, but I found myself lost in too many icons & colors! From what you are telling me, I can just stick with Gnucash...
12:53:06 <kimmo> warlord, does it do a huge split, moving everything in income/expense to a "net result" account, or something else?
12:54:07 <kimmo> I can wholeheartedly recommend gnucash, I've been using it for some 11 years now, and by using 10% of the features I get done with all my accounting needs
12:54:26 <warlord> kimmo: yes
12:54:41 <warlord> That's exactly what it does. Well, 1 txn for income, and 1 for expense
12:54:46 <kimmo> ook
12:54:58 <kimmo> damnit, I've been doing that by hand for ages
12:54:59 <kimmo> heh
12:56:48 <warlord> Heh!
12:57:45 <kimmo> it won't do nothing to asset/liability accounts, no change to assign automatic depreciation rules?
12:57:48 <kimmo> chance
12:58:17 <warlord> Right
12:58:35 <kimmo> if I had more accounts, I might be pissed
12:59:15 <warlord> Heh
12:59:31 <warlord> Tools -> Close Books has been around since 2.2.x somewhere (I forget when I added it)
13:00:27 <kimmo> oh, is there a way to get a report of all non-placeholder accounts, sorted by account code, displaying just Type, Code, Name, Description ?
13:00:46 <kimmo> oh it's that new
13:02:25 <warlord> Yeah, a couple years..
13:02:49 <mezimezim> I have used gnucash to keep track of my expenses related to renovations, and I have payed in different ways for renovations (VISA, cash, re mortgage, etc.) ....all of this is in gnucash, I would like to quickly find out the total expense that went into renovation, which was paid in ways other than re-mortgaging, is there such a quick way one of you could think of?
13:02:50 <warlord> Um... I can't think of any report that will give you that information.
13:03:27 <warlord> mezimezim: sure, look at the total in your Expenses:Renovation account.
13:03:42 <warlord> (or, Assets:House:Renovation, which is more accurate to where it should have gone)
13:03:45 <kimmo> ok no biggie, I have that info on an .ods anyway, I just have to keep it in synch with gnucash
13:04:22 <warlord> You could try basing something on an Account Summary report?
13:06:32 <kimmo> oh yeah
13:06:46 <kimmo> hmm, there's no simple way to filter out placeholder accounts
13:06:47 <mezimezim> warlord: expenses:renovation will give me the TOTAL expense on renovation, but I have paid for renovation in several ways, I would like to find out all that went into renovation from accounts OTHER than the mortgage account....
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13:07:01 <warlord> kimmo: no there are not, but they will always have $0
13:07:32 <kimmo> well I have a lot of non-placeholders that total to $0...
13:07:54 <warlord> mezimezim: I dont understand... You pay by cash: Cash -> Ex:Ren. You pay by Credit Card: CC -> Ex:Ren. You pay my mortgage: Loan -> Ex:Ren. Ex:Ren now has your total!
13:08:04 <warlord> kimmo: does it really matter?
13:08:14 <warlord> If it does, hack the scheme to filter out placeholders.
13:08:53 <kimmo> well, I have to include a map of active accounts in the financial reports... It's not biggie tho
13:09:17 <kimmo> warlord, he wants the Ex:Ren less money from Loan
13:09:34 <kimmo> I can't imagine why, though
13:10:00 <kimmo> maybe he's figuring out the cash flow on the renovation
13:10:22 <warlord> kimmo: Why?
13:10:30 <mezimezim> kimmo: exactly, that's what I want, and I am figuring out cash flow in renovations...
13:10:32 <kimmo> which doesn't really make sense as you're (hopefully) making periodic payments on the mortgage
13:11:19 <kimmo> warlord, why I have to include the map of accounts? It's the law here. I have it on a spreadsheet though so it's no biggie
13:11:46 <warlord> mezimezim: AHHH!! Then run a Cash Flow report and choose the Ex:Ren and Loan accounts.
13:12:01 <warlord> kimmo: why can't you include placeholders?
13:12:01 <kimmo> mezimezim, you might want to make it so that any renovation financed by mortgage goes into increasing the property's value, so not Ex:Ren but Asset:Property
13:12:28 <warlord> Well, yeah,it really should be Asset:House:Ren, not Ex:Ren. Because it's not really an expense -- it's adding to the basis of the house.
13:12:31 <kimmo> warlord, hmm, truth be told, I don't really know
13:13:30 <mezimezim> kimmo: that makes sense, although out here in the country houses cost more to build than their value, so an expense into renovation does not directly translate in an increase in value (unfortunately...)
13:13:57 <warlord> mezimezim: no, but it DOES translate into an increase in your cost basis for the house...
13:14:08 <warlord> so when you sell you can change your gain/loss
13:14:30 <kimmo> at least in Finland, the book value of a property is strictly controlled by accounting and taxation laws and regulations
13:15:16 <kimmo> there are quite anal rules on what improvements can be counted as expenses, which must be counted as activation to balance sheet, and the combination of those
13:15:53 <kimmo> even more so when the property in question is owned by a company required to keep books
13:19:21 <kimmo> for example, travel expenses to the apartment house owner's meeting is not an expense, it increases the book value of the property (As it's not money spent to restore the property to the original condition)
13:21:16 <warlord> Really? Wow.
13:21:41 <warlord> I should look to see if my travel to my property affects my basis
13:22:32 <kimmo> well this is finland, our system is rather anal
13:23:08 <kimmo> also, owning, operating, and renting apartments is not considered a business
13:24:25 <kimmo> so even though my consulting company has used the profits from consulting to acquire some real estate, and they are in the same ledger, for taxation purposes I have to separate real estate from the others
13:25:02 <kimmo> the local IRS is afraid that otherwise people would come up with all kinds of business expenses that could be deducted from real estate income
13:27:52 <mezimezim> well, I have simply set up an appreciation account, here in Canada (Québec), the value of properties is evaluated periodically by people called "evaluators", they take into acccount offer/demand mostly
13:30:00 <kimmo> well, I _could_ do that (I'm surprised I don't have to), but then I'd have to pay income tax on the appreciation
13:30:05 <kimmo> I'd rather pay it later
13:31:11 <mezimezim> mmm....how did you say, anal?
13:41:38 <mezimezim> alright guys, thanks for these tips!
13:41:47 <mezimezim> lunchtime!!
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14:41:10 <mezimezim> warlord & kimmo: thanks, I have run a cash flow and it does exactly what I need it to!!
14:41:20 <warlord> Excellent.
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14:54:19 <kimmo> it's so nice to get positive feedback and a thank you
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14:57:00 <warlord> It is indeed. :-D
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16:39:18 <warlord> linas_: thank you for the DNS kick. Any idea why it keeps hanging?
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16:42:29 <linas_> yeah, I think its a side effect of my security setup. I made the dns dirs read-only, this seems to be recking the updates
16:50:45 <warlord> Yeah, that would be an issue..
16:51:23 <warlord> if you're hosting a slave zone, dns needs to be able to write into the 2nd/slave dir in order to perform the AXFR automatically.
16:52:07 <warlord> Note that this is why you should make slave zones store data in a different dir.. Worst case someone can muck up *my* domains if they find a way to scribble into that dir.
16:52:36 <linas_> yes ... I have to spend some quality time editing files & testing ..
16:52:52 <warlord> I'm happy to help test.. I can push out DNS updates for you..
16:53:22 <warlord> Unfortunately the fact that the server didn't take the update a couple days ago means that I cannot shut down my old mail server until at least 8pm. :-(
16:53:24 <linas_> ah hell. I'm stuck with the other thing I was working on right now ..
16:54:38 <warlord> I know the feeling. :-/
16:54:49 <warlord> At least I fixed my textrel issue
17:12:33 <kimmo> hey linas, long time no see
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18:06:35 <linas_> hey .. well I keep busy
18:06:44 <warlord> Sometimes too busy. ;-)
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18:22:31 <linas_> yeah...
18:22:46 <linas_> haven't figured my way out of that ..
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18:33:59 <kimmo> I can't wait for retirement
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18:46:48 <warlord> heh
18:52:42 <kimmo> still have some mileage to complete. 7 years and a few months to go
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19:40:24 <warlord> Okay, heading for dinner. Later, all
19:40:40 <warlord> linas_: if you want me to help test DNS, let me know when I get back and I can update my zone to force an AXFR
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