2011-03-02 GnuCash IRC logs

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04:03:55 <Carlos> Hi, I am just starting to use the gnucash with the MySQL connection and I wonder if it is possible to have simultaneous write on the database from differente gnucash clients
04:11:45 <mishehu> in theory I believe that is possible. but i'm not a dev here, and I've not tried yet, so I can't say for certain.
04:13:19 <Carlos> I tried from different clients but there was a response message saying that the DB was already opened by another user and therefore I wouldn't be able to update the DB
04:13:45 <Carlos> I think it is a kind of table lock
04:14:53 <Carlos> The idea is to have the possibility to work from different clients at the same time so that two or more people could feed the information from different places
04:15:06 <Carlos> Any help will be appreciated
04:27:46 <mishehu> you'll have to hang arounda few more hours. I suspect most of the folks here are asleep
04:27:53 <mishehu> and i'm going myself, I'm pooped
04:31:18 <Carlos> I understand, anyway this is not an urgent matter in spite of it is important
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04:52:40 <blathijs> Carlos: It's not possible, GnuCASH isn't designed as a true database application
04:53:00 <Carlos> OK
04:53:02 <Carlos> I see
04:53:04 <blathijs> in fact, I think it actually loads all data into memory on startup and writes everything back at close
04:53:16 <blathijs> It's a goal for future releases, though
04:53:33 <Carlos> Yes, it might be very good to have such a feature
04:54:41 <Carlos> With the current realease we need to end up with a connection before being able to make another one. It is not the best way but we have to live with it meanwhile
05:18:38 <Carlos> Well, having a look into the documentation I found that the save button is disabled because the app writes teh changes as they occur so from this point of view unless it is not a true DB app, it writes and read continuously
05:18:50 <Carlos> and not at the end
05:19:30 <Carlos> in any case it locks the tables while is connected and then it locks while closing the sesion
05:22:30 <blathijs> Carlos: Then my suggestion is not completely correct, but I'm 100% sure it cannot be used simultaneously right now
05:23:14 <Carlos> Yes, I agree with you. It is not possible to have simultaneous write
05:23:23 <Carlos> That's a pitty
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07:19:57 <warlord> Carlos, mishehu: No, 2.4 is not multi-user.
07:20:54 <warlord> blathijs, Carlos: actually, the SQL backend does not write everything back on close. (Although it does currently read everything in on load)
07:26:15 <Carlos> Yes, warlord that's one of the reasons. However, if we could have the possibility to access the same DB from different client it could be really good
07:27:03 <warlord> Carlos: you can. Just not simultaneously.
07:27:19 <warlord> Once you close down the first client, the second client can access it.
07:28:06 <Carlos> warlod: Yes, that's the way I see it could work, however if we could do that simultaneously will be good
07:28:13 <Carlos> maybe in future releases
07:28:48 <warlord> It would require some major architectural changes to GnuCash to make it a true DB app in order to support multi-user.
07:29:08 <warlord> That's a twinkle, but AFAIK not in the roadmap. I wouldn't expect true multi-user for at least 2-3 major releases.
07:29:28 <warlord> I can't imagine any personal users who need it..
07:29:35 <warlord> And GnuCash isn't designed to be an enterprise app.
07:29:54 <warlord> So really we're only talking about larger small-business size.
07:30:17 <warlord> But if you can't use Quicken or Quickboooks, you shouldn't use GnuCash either. GnuCash is not a replacement for SAP.
07:48:56 <Carlos> Yes, I was thinking that it shouldn't be that hard to deploy. In any case I could survive with it.
07:49:29 <Carlos> I should say that GNUCASH is very powerful
07:51:42 <Mer|in> warlord: i think it would save you a lot of time if you would just script that dialog.
07:52:03 <warlord> Mer|in: Heh
07:52:45 <warlord> Carlos: I'll point out this is sorta why I wanted this version of the DB backend to only support SQLite.. But the developers doing the work didn't want to artificially make that limitation.
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10:25:42 <Antisoche> Does GNC have a method that returns the "best" string representation of a number? "Best" meaning having no trailing 0s after the decimal
10:27:29 <warlord> I'm not sure I agree with that definition of "best"
10:28:15 <Antisoche> As an example, in the ledger I have tranascations for "1.8259" shares, and "9.908" shares.
10:28:25 <warlord> But there is an API, 'xaccPrintAmount'
10:28:38 <Antisoche> I agree with you in the "Tot Buy" column though :)
10:29:27 <Antisoche> Unfortunately, it seems that forcing it to show 2 decimal places puts all data entry in cents.
10:29:54 <warlord> You can use xaccPrintAmount and set 'min_decimal_places' to 0
10:30:03 <warlord> c.f. src/app-utils/gnc-ui-util.h
10:30:48 <warlord> I'm not sure I understand what you mean, "forcing it... puts all data entry in cents."?? What does that mean?
10:31:14 <warlord> (but yes, when you're in a $-denoted account, it will always print the cents -- doing otherwise makes no sense)
10:32:20 <Antisoche> Edit->Preferences->General->"Automatic decimal point" and "Decimal places = 2" forces 0.xx in my accounts, but then if I type "50" as an input and hit tab, it records it as 0.50
10:32:52 <Antisoche> Right now I have a number of "buy" transactions for "18.1", "163.8", etc.
10:33:12 <Antisoche> Non $-denominated
10:34:16 <warlord> The "Automatic decimal point" preference says: "Automatically insert a decimal point into values that are entered without one".. So it's doing exactly what you told it to do: 50 -> 0.50
10:34:58 <warlord> So you're buying 18.1 shares?
10:35:13 <Antisoche> A dividend of $18.10
10:35:29 <Antisoche> 0.3863 shares
10:36:34 <warlord> So the 'buy' is $18.10?
10:36:54 <Antisoche> Yes, with 'Tot Buy' displayed as '18.1'
10:37:17 <Antisoche> (In 2.2.9 ... will check 2.4 in a few minutes)
10:37:21 <warlord> It's not doing that for me.
10:37:47 <warlord> What's the currency of the parent account of the stock account?
10:38:56 <Antisoche> The parent is a druid "Stock" account denominated in USD
10:39:51 <warlord> and what's the parent of that one?
10:39:54 <Antisoche> But in my other account whose parent is "Bank" it does the same
10:40:11 <warlord> Not sure what to tell you; I haven't used 2.2.x in years.
10:40:12 <Antisoche> Sorry, parent is "Asset"
10:41:29 <Antisoche> 2.4 seems to be doing the right thing
10:43:07 <warlord> ok
10:43:46 <Antisoche> Is it just my side, or does GNC take a _really_ long time to build?
10:46:54 <Antisoche> 2:45 to basically change a printf(), doing make from src/
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10:48:05 <Antisoche> ... and of course, I can't run the resultant binary. make install from trunk/ takes ...
10:51:39 <Antisoche> 3:45 ... it least that's faster. I thought it was taking 5 minutes last night.
10:52:42 <Antisoche> crap. Not what I wanted...
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11:03:36 <warlord> Antisoche: If you're changing a .c file all you generally have to do it make ; make install from that directory.
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11:04:48 <Antisoche> warlord: Thanks. I found that you have to do at least one top-level 'make install' to get the UI (or maybe Quote::Finanace) to work, otherwise you just get flaming death with guile/scheme errors about not being about to find www
11:05:45 <Antisoche> Actually, really? I could 'make install' from src/engine ?
11:06:40 <warlord> Well, you have to do a top-level make; make install once.. Then after that, yeah, you could just make; make install from src/engine
11:09:43 <Antisoche> 5:46 to make install. I guess that means 3:45 is just the install part, and 2 minutes to build.
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11:10:36 <warlord> 5m46s is pretty great!
11:10:54 <warlord> The install has to re-link everything.
11:11:01 <Antisoche> For changing one .c file in engine/ ?
11:11:41 <Antisoche> Nice. I think xaccSPrintAmount() is one of my new favorite functions. :)
11:11:43 <warlord> if you run it from the top-level?
11:11:52 <Antisoche> Yeah, that was from top-level
11:13:20 <jsled> just run it from src/engine/
11:13:25 <jsled> it used to work, at least.
11:14:27 <Antisoche> Very non-conducive to my preferred development mode ... recompile and test every change as you go ... I expect there's a convenience function for what I want, I just need to find it, so at least one more build is in my future
11:18:44 <warlord> Antisoche: what part of "you dont need to rebuild from the top level for every change" are you failing to comprehend?
11:19:50 <warlord> If you change a .c file then you only need to make/install from that directory
11:20:32 <Antisoche> warlord: I don't know what you're referring to. I did a top-level 'make install' and you said I don't need to do that. I said great. Then I said that I need to find a function so I'll have another opportunity to test it. I'm looking for the function I want.
11:21:29 <warlord> I'm referring to the " Very non-conducive to my preferred development mode ..."
11:21:45 <warlord> What function are you looking for?
11:22:07 <Antisoche> Taking almost 6, or even almost 3, minutes just to get a binary seems rather long to me.
11:22:48 <jsled> Antisoche: you need to install the thing to run it. so, you need to do that once. afterward, when you make a change in, eg., src/engine/, you just need to run `make install` in src/engine
11:23:00 <jsled> s/that/`make install` at the top level/
11:23:09 <Antisoche> If I knew what function I was looking for I wouldn't need to look ... I want something that returns the set of GNCPrintAmountInfo settings that I just did by hand.
11:23:25 <Antisoche> jsled: Yeah, I got that. Still.
11:23:40 <jsled> "Still" what?
11:24:06 <Antisoche> I still understand that as soon as I find the function I want I can do a 'make install' from src/engine.
11:24:46 <jsled> so, why do you keep talking about 3m and 6m and stuff?
11:26:19 <Antisoche> Because those are the only numbers I have for reference at this point. And those numbers are not good. So if this src/engine make install works as described, great. I only mentioned it once after saying how long it took.
11:26:31 <warlord> Antisoche: well, it could be one of the many *print_info() APIs in gnc-ui-util.h
11:26:43 <jsled> you could just touch a file in src/engine/ and try it real quick, if you care
11:26:53 <warlord> 3 minutes for a full build is damn fast.
11:27:40 <Antisoche> jsled: It's not my highest priority thing at the moment. Which appears to be explaining myself on IRC, which it should not be.
11:27:53 <jsled> heh
11:27:59 <Antisoche> warlord: Yes, that's what I'm trying to look at, thanks.
11:33:18 <warlord> Antisoche: what specific print_info are you trying to find?
11:33:46 <Antisoche> It looks like gnc_commodity_print_info is what I want
11:34:55 <Antisoche> And I don't know how to answer that question if I didn't already know.
11:35:23 <warlord> You could've described the print_info without knowing the name of it.
11:35:31 <Antisoche> 6 seconds to make install from src/engine. Much better.
11:36:04 <Antisoche> warlord: I think that assumes I know a lot more about what I'm doing than I am. :)
11:36:19 <warlord> Maybe.
11:37:40 <Antisoche> But I'm working on the much-reviled idea of slapping extra info into the 'View Lots's generated Realized Gain/Loss field
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11:49:12 <Askarii1> where can I change the default width of an invoice?
11:49:26 <Askarii1> or at least the minimum/maximum width
11:49:33 <Antisoche> Got what I wanted finally. Not terrible. GNC code is pretty nice methinks.
11:49:48 <Antisoche> Askarii1: Have you looked in the report options?
11:49:54 <Askarii1> yes
11:50:27 <Askarii1> and in the stylesheet options
11:50:49 <Antisoche> I thought it was right there under general ...
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11:52:31 <Antisoche> The 'Display' tab has an Invoice width
11:52:32 <Askarii1> ??
11:53:00 <Askarii1> i dont see that option
11:53:31 <Antisoche> You're talking about Reports->Business->Easy Invoice, yes?
11:53:44 <Askarii1> fancy invoice
11:54:39 <warlord> Antisoche: The bad idea is *storing* the data twice. Displaying it by following the object references is perfectly reasonable!
11:54:55 <warlord> While you're working there, maybe you can help make the list sortable by column headings, too?!?
11:55:21 <Antisoche> Askarii1: Ahh. 'Fancy Invoice' doesn't seem to have a width option.
11:55:23 <Askarii1> and yes
11:55:30 <Askarii1> in simple invoice I see the width
11:55:35 <Askarii1> nto in fancy invoice
11:55:45 <warlord> Askarii1: Why would you want the width wider than the page?
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11:56:05 <Askarii1> warlord: witht he fancy invoice my invoice shrunk to about 600 px wide
11:56:22 <Askarii1> and on other invoices (still fancy) its fine at 800 - 900 px wide
11:56:35 <Antisoche> warlord: semantic parse error.
11:56:39 <Askarii1> it resizes based on the content
11:57:20 <Antisoche> warlord: I'm not near the GUI stuff at the moment ...
11:59:57 <warlord> Antisoche: Oh. Yeah, storing data twice is BAD. Seriously, don't spend your time working on it. Your time would seriously be better spent adding the data into the GUI.
12:00:54 <warlord> trust me!
12:01:12 <warlord> The whole point of the data object model is so you dont have to store data twice.
12:01:16 <Antisoche> warlord: You could use that same argument to dispute putting the string "Realized Gain/Loss" in the description field - it should be divinable by the tranaction accounts.
12:01:47 <warlord> Not really. There's nothing special about the accounts in general.
12:02:15 <Antisoche> Except that "Orphaned Gains" is hard-coded
12:02:17 <warlord> And you could change the accounts.
12:02:37 <warlord> Well, the concept IIRC is that you would then move that to a "real" gain account
12:02:59 <Antisoche> Oh, I understand the concept...
12:03:03 <warlord> or an arbitrary income account.
12:03:20 <Antisoche> You just want me to use the Lot Viewer.
12:04:07 <warlord> However, determing the purchase date of a sale... or the particular sale-split of a cap-gain... That data is all in the object referential model already.
12:04:21 <warlord> Yes, because the Lot View can (or SHOULD) have all the data in it.
12:04:39 <Askarii1> got a quick code question
12:04:40 <warlord> .. and if it doesn't, adding it should be relatively simple, because the data already exists in the data file!
12:04:59 <Antisoche> I think this was a good exercise for me. I doesn't matter if it never goes anywhere, but it gave me some exposure to GNC workings, which I've never looked at before.
12:05:17 <Askarii1> (gnc:register-inv-option
12:05:17 <Askarii1> (gnc:make-text-option
12:05:17 <Askarii1> (N_ "Text") (N_ "Extra Notes")
12:05:17 <Askarii1> "v" (N_ "Extra notes to put on the invoice (simple HTML is accepted)")
12:05:17 <Askarii1> (_ "Faire en sorte que tous les chèques soient payables à: Nexwave
12:05:18 <Askarii1> Pour les requêtes sur la facturation: billing@nexwave.ca
12:05:20 <Askarii1> Merci de votre confiance ")))
12:05:21 <warlord> Antisoche: sure, excercises are always good.
12:05:31 <Askarii1> how do I "jump a line" in the default content?
12:06:59 <warlord> Askarii1: For one thing, you don't want/need to use (_ .. ) there, because it's not a string that's going to be translated (I'm assuming you're doing this only for yourself). Second, as the message says, "simple HTML is accepted", so just use HTML: <br>?
12:07:29 <Askarii1> i used
12:07:33 <Askarii1> <br/> and didnt work
12:08:10 <warlord> Try it without the /
12:09:03 <Askarii1> nope
12:09:10 <Antisoche> warlord: It seems to me that the "Lot Viewer" needs considerable work to be useful. Much more than I could devote to it now. Changing that field only took a few hours (most of which seemed to be waiting for compiles to finish...)
12:09:11 <Askarii1> i,ll try paparagpraphs :P
12:10:17 <Antisoche> warlord: But the solution I came up with yesterday I think actually works better for me, because Advanced Portfolio then Just Works(tm).
12:10:27 <Antisoche> (solution == hack)
12:12:28 * warlord doesn't like hacks, because they're not generally useful to the population at large.
12:13:05 <Antisoche> Maybe, maybe not. But I'd make the same statement about "View Lots". :)
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12:13:49 <Antisoche> Ever clicked on that "New Lot" button? It looks like it creates a blank entry from 1969 that you can't do anything with.
12:17:56 <Antisoche> And then there's the issue that fixing "View Lots" doesn't fix Advanced Profile, which would also need to be done. It also means a wide proliferation of subaccounts. This actually works nicely because I can dump all the gains into one account (or two) and use the account filter mechanism. If I wanted to. Either way, this is actually very handy.
12:18:50 <Antisoche> Funnily enough, it's now obvious to me what the sort order is as well - it's sorted by number of shares transacted alphabetically.
12:19:19 <Antisoche> (..., 2.1044, 250, 3.8062, ...)
12:21:29 <Antisoche> Actually, the more I look at this, the more it makes me happy.
12:21:33 <warlord> I admit that the Lots UI is half-baked.
12:22:59 <Antisoche> Interested in a couple screen shots?
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12:24:56 <warlord> Sure.
12:24:58 <warlord> Why not?
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12:47:18 <Antisoche> http://imagebin.org/140776
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12:48:45 <Antisoche> I pretty sure my description doesn't work if only a partial lot is sold but I haven't tested that. If it does it's by pure luck.
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12:53:22 <warlord> I don't see how this change makes a difference to the Adv Port report?
12:54:07 <Antisoche> Directly, it doesn't. The thing that makes the change there is breaking the account into two.
12:55:02 <Antisoche> But it does let you get similar information (I think...) my going into "Orphan Gains" and doing a "Find" on the ticker symbol, and then filter by date.
12:55:25 <Antisoche> Nope, filter by date won't work.
12:55:55 <Antisoche> Not sure what I was thinking there...
12:56:15 * Antisoche had a few ideas swimming around to solve his problem.
12:56:55 <Antisoche> I think what I was thinking is that I could go into "Orphan Gains" and from there put them into the right accounts.
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12:58:03 <Antisoche> Part of what I wanted (at one time) was to be able to look at Orphan Gains and just filter to get the info I needed, but I think that was going to bring me back to not having the fees included, so it doesn't work anyway.
12:59:15 <Antisoche> But having two accounts was my (solution==hack) that you said wouldn't be useful to others.
12:59:45 <warlord> Maybe there needs to be a "short v. long term gains delta" as part of the scrub routine in order to choose a proper gain/loss account?
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13:00:19 <warlord> No, the part I disagree with is duplicating the #shares and date in the description
13:00:23 <Antisoche> I would agree with that, and also that you should be able to specify the gains account instead of getting dumped into orphan for each time period.
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13:01:03 <warlord> That would also be good, but you would probably need to be able to specify a gain/loss account per stock/fund account.
13:02:21 <Antisoche> Not to pick nits, but see [12:10:21]. I understand the data duplication thing.
13:02:58 <warlord> k
13:03:37 <Antisoche> Yes, you either need to split gain/loss into their own STK account, or split each STK into l/t and s/t periods. And I think if you split the gains accounts out, you lose the cost (fee) information.
13:03:57 <Antisoche> At least, with the current implementation of Advanced Portfolio.
13:04:58 <Antisoche> Well, I take that back - AdvPort could also be thing that understands l/t vs. s/t, which would be the ideal I think.
13:06:02 <Antisoche> I haven't considered how to handle split lots. It would be best for the report to.
13:06:04 <warlord> True.
13:07:21 <warlord> I think much of this can/should be done in the AdvPort report
13:07:39 <Antisoche> ... but all that aside, I still like seeing the more ... verbose ... description.
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13:09:34 <Antisoche> If only "View Lots" would let me scrub part of a lot I could test that easily, too. :)
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13:11:49 <warlord> SMOP. The view lots feature needs some love. Care to give it? :)
13:13:25 * Antisoche has no love for View Lots :)
13:14:28 <Antisoche> It's not terribly clear to me what it's intent is as the moment, but it's something I could consider. No promises though.
13:15:21 <Antisoche> Actually - I think what I want is a set of custom UIs for GNC.
13:18:00 <Antisoche> I was thinking that if there was a commandline GNC client someone could write a "Checkbook" application and a "Small Biz" application and a "Trading" application that all fed into the same GNC data file. "Trading" would have buttons like "Buy", "Sell", "Split", "Spinoff", "DRIP" that just DWIM the data file. But you could still fire up GNC to get a 'holistic' view of your finances.
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13:18:48 <Antisoche> And if it were commandline, there could be a web interface so you could do this from your phone, etc. etc. Integrate with SquareUp or whatever.
13:19:22 <warlord> You could try to write something using the python bindings?
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13:20:51 <Antisoche> Perhaps. I was thinking a regular C app. The API doesn't seem like it would be that complicated.
13:21:15 <Antisoche> Python might be better for a web interface.
13:21:44 <Antisoche> 6 of one, I think
13:22:16 * warlord shrugs.
13:22:26 <warlord> I am not a fan of python, but I'm pointing out its existence anyways.
13:22:44 <Antisoche> I've never played with it.
13:23:13 <Antisoche> I tried to once and got yelled at for putting semicolons all over the place.
13:24:44 <warlord> lol
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16:11:00 <Antisoche> enough. http://imagebin.org/140805
16:19:35 <warlord> k
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19:54:12 <GitHub182> gnucash: master J. Alex Aycinena * 2a2319c (1 files in 1 dirs): Correct memory leak found with valgrind - http://bit.ly/h7exGZ
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20:01:49 <tedcx> When Reconciling the "Transfer Funds" popup window activates asking to transfer the new balance amount even though the account is balanced. What's wrong?
20:03:53 <warlord> tedcx: nothing. it's offering you to enter the interest (or payment if it's a CC)
20:04:12 <tedcx> Thanks
20:04:18 <warlord> you're welcome.
20:04:57 <tedcx> Great software
20:05:09 <tedcx> PS Can I do Commodities?
20:08:18 <Antisoche> Why would you not be able to?
20:13:39 <tedcx> Well, I don't see an explicit Commodities account with a UOM (Unit of Measure) in oz, troy oz, ea, lbs, tons, etc
20:14:56 <Antisoche> My thought would be to treat it as a foreign currency (assuming you have something like gold or silver).
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20:15:21 <tedcx> OK will try
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20:15:53 <Antisoche> It looks like GnuCash wants you to use the 'Stock' account.
20:16:37 <Antisoche> Of course, I don't always trust the docs. :)
20:17:35 <Antisoche> Actually, I was just looking at that. Stocks _are_ commodities.
20:18:07 <Antisoche> (If I understand what I was doing, which is not necessarily safe to assume is true.)
20:18:33 <tedcx> Where a share would be an "each coin" or "troy oz"?
20:19:48 <Antisoche> When you create a "New Security" you can use whatever units you want.
20:20:06 <tedcx> INteresting
20:20:14 <Antisoche> If you're trading stocks, the account trades in "IBM"s (or whatever).
20:20:47 <tedcx> I.e. "Each"
20:20:57 <Antisoche> And it's treated like a foreign currency for converting between $ and whatever the unit is.
20:21:50 <Antisoche> If you're accounting for cows, perhaps, but if you're doing metals I'd probably use oz.
20:22:32 <Antisoche> That'll let you trade in silver coins, nuggets, or bricks. Of course, you'll have to handle the purity somehow...
20:27:14 <tedcx> You' d handle that by the coin or bar type by name i.e. Eagle, Bufffalo, etc
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20:31:01 <max> is it possible to automate tranfers by percentage?
20:31:13 <Antisoche> tedcx: So what I would want to do is create an Account called "Silver", measured in oz, with a subaccount "Eagle" (of eagles) and another of "Buffalo" (in buffalos). In the Price editor you can say (I think) 1 eagle = 1 oz, 1 buffalo = 20 oz, etc. If that actually works, then "Silver" can be a holding account that gives you total oz, and you can tie that to SLV to get real-time valuation.
20:31:50 <Antisoche> (You probably don't want to tie it to SLV, but I hope you undersatnd what I'm saying...)
20:33:05 <Antisoche> max: Have you tried putting a '%' in the transaction editor?
20:35:04 <max> antisoche: I am a little new, do you mean inside the ledger?
20:35:11 <Antisoche> max: It doesn't look possible. It probably doesn't make much sense to do so.
20:36:24 <Antisoche> max: Under "Actions" there's "Scheduled Transactions"
20:36:38 <Antisoche> max: From there you can "Schedule->New"
20:36:53 * Antisoche has never used scheduled transactions...
20:40:34 <max> I am really trying to calculate charity...
20:40:47 <max> I just have found an easy way to deal with it...
20:41:11 <max> *haven't
20:42:02 <max> anitsoche: I really just need to move 10% of an account to another..
20:42:25 <Antisoche> Not sure what you mean
20:43:11 <max> meaning, I want to move 10% if my income each month to an account called "charity"
20:43:14 <Antisoche> Well, to do it manually, just move the current balance, shifting the decimal place 1 point (or putting in the curreant account value and typing *.1 at the end)
20:44:34 <Antisoche> Yeah - it's that automatic part I'm not too sure about. The schedule transaction field asks for a formula so it may be possible ...
20:44:38 <max> yeah, I just didn't know if it was possible to automate it
20:45:48 <Antisoche> It looks like you can schedule a transaction for "i * .1" maybe
20:46:40 <Antisoche> Whoops, nope. I misread that.
20:46:56 <Antisoche> It looks like jsled wrote that feature ...
20:49:15 <Antisoche> max: How well do you know scheme? :)
20:49:37 <max> haha, I actually do know some scheme coincidentally
20:49:45 <Antisoche> oh-ho !
20:49:52 <max> I guess it requires hacking to automate something like this..
20:49:53 <Antisoche> http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2005-February/012964.html
20:50:06 <max> I saw that one already...
20:50:25 <Antisoche> oh. Sorry then, that's all I got.
20:50:28 <max> I mean gnucash is so feature rich I just thought I had no idea what was going on..
20:50:40 * Antisoche puts himself in that boat
20:50:41 <max> I thought it was easy to implement
20:51:03 <max> so I guess the most realistic thing to do is split each of my transactions
20:51:40 <Antisoche> I keep my account in auto-split mode. It's the only way I follow what's going on.
20:52:04 <Antisoche> Apparently "easy" confuses me.
20:53:27 <max> so know basically, i want to add an additional debit of 10 percent to the charity expense
20:54:42 <Antisoche> As its own transaction or as part of a split of another transaction?
20:54:59 <max> part of the split...say when I deposit a check
20:56:14 <Antisoche> Okay, so from "Income" you get "$100". In the splits, you put "$90" into "Bank" and "$10" into "Charity". Like that?
20:56:38 <max> I guess so, but that sounds like a bad way of doing it...
20:57:03 <Antisoche> How so?
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20:58:40 <max> it seems like it requires to much effort...
20:58:57 <max> how would you do it?
20:58:58 <Antisoche> Well ... this isn't a banking app, it's an accounting app, so whatever is going on with a transaction should reflect what you are actually doing.
20:59:34 <Antisoche> It sounds like you're just "reserving" cash for charity, without actually giving it yet.
21:00:33 <max> basically
21:00:52 <Antisoche> If so, I'd setup "Bank" and create 2 sub accounts, "Me" and "Charity". Then, I would enter the transaction as I described. This way "Bank" reflects reality, but you see what you have set aside. Then when you actually draw out the money, you take from Bank:Charity and credit Expense:Charity.
21:01:37 <Antisoche> So "Bank" is a holdinh account, and "Bank:Me" is your cash, and "Bank:Charity" is what you have set aside.
21:02:44 <Antisoche> Kinda like "Bank:Checking" and "Bank:Savings" I suppose
21:03:01 <max> I see
21:03:19 <max> that make more sense to me...I am just surprised that you can't automate it
21:03:25 <Antisoche> It sounds like what you want is to be able to deposit into "Bank" and have it autosplit 90/10, which I'm pretty confident it won't do for you.
21:04:38 <Antisoche> You might be able to script that somehow, but that's beyond me at this point. There are python bindings (I'm told) so if you know python you could write a "deposit-reserve.py" script that takes a check amount and does what you want...
21:05:42 <max> how did you scheme and python are my game?!
21:05:49 <max> *know
21:06:20 <max> see thats my problem, I try to rewrite everything rather than doing it the way it was intended
21:07:00 <Antisoche> You are the anti-antisoche !
21:07:02 <Antisoche> :)
21:07:11 <max> here is the problem though, how do I prevent myself from taking 10% twice
21:07:42 <Antisoche> How would you accidentally do that?
21:08:26 <max> I am looking at my income....
21:09:03 <max> if transfer from that account to my charity account 10%, next month I am going to be taking 10% from part of that principle
21:11:06 <Antisoche> I'm not following. You'll have to do the 10/90 split for every transaction for every account under 'income'.
21:11:34 <Antisoche> As long as you do that, you don't do anything monthly, except spend what's in Bank:Charity
21:11:42 <max> yeah I see...
21:11:45 <max> hmmm
21:12:41 <max> its almost easiar to make every deposit, 2 seperate transactons. debit to cash and credit to charity
21:13:06 <Antisoche> So you want to have a monthly transaction that is 10% of all your income, without having to do the heavy lifting of putting the split in every 'Income' transaction.
21:13:37 <Antisoche> Well, it's 1 transaction with two splits, but yes.
21:14:23 <Antisoche> I think the first time I see someone new in IRC I'm going to say, "Hello, please make sure you're using the auto-split view."
21:15:44 <Antisoche> If you have investments that pay dividends the manual method will get very busy. A single monthly transaction would be better...
21:16:51 <max> I just want avoid the math of splitting transaction...
21:17:29 <Antisoche> Right? Because besides checks you're also going to want to split 10% out of your interest, etc, unless you're with an islamic bank or something.
21:18:03 <Antisoche> Well, 10% is easy to calculate. Do that transaction first and GnuCash will automatically put the remaining 90% on the next line. You just slect the proper account.
21:19:03 <warlord> max: there's no way to automate it per se. You don't have to do the math completely, tho. You can always type: 12651 *.1 (.1 == 10%)
21:19:09 <warlord> But no, there's no way to automate it.
21:19:25 <warlord> Even with SXes, there is no "account-balance-as-of" function
21:19:52 <warlord> There's also no hook where you can "apply this transformation on every new transaction in an account" either.
21:19:54 <warlord> Sorry.
21:20:11 <warlord> GnuCash is meant to record what you do, not necessarily figure out everything you'd like to do for you.
21:20:21 <warlord> (note that there is no payroll computation feature, either)
21:22:21 <Antisoche> What you might be able to do is create a "Income - Settled" account. Then every month, debit the entire balance from "Income" with 10% going into "Charity" and the remainder going into "Income - Settled".
21:22:46 <Antisoche> I would think that that would confuse your book incredibly, though.
21:23:45 <Antisoche> (This "Income - Settled" would be at the top-level like the normal "Income")
21:24:50 <Antisoche> What do you suppose is going on at this site? It's #4 on my google search result: http://www.spiderbots.co.cc/gnucash-formula.html
21:27:24 <max> haha I have no idea...
21:28:05 <max> anyways, I think it makes sense to move the money to the charity account each deposit
21:28:39 <max> anyways, thanks for you help antisoche...
21:28:48 <Antisoche> I would say that's the right way to do it.
21:29:02 <warlord> Wow, that's..... weird.
21:29:11 <Antisoche> Sure thing. I harrassed warlord for the past two days so just trying to pay it forward :)
21:29:48 <warlord> thanks, Antisoche
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21:35:40 <Antisoche> Well, I submitted a page removal request. We'll see what happens.
21:36:02 <Antisoche> That entire site looks bogus.
21:36:06 <Antisoche> warlord: sure thing
21:37:29 <Antisoche> Does it make sense that this page is part of the current help: http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html
21:38:24 <Antisoche> Shouldn't all that text be replaced with "Perform Actions->View Lots->Scrub Account" ?
21:39:23 <warlord> once the lot viewer is done ;)
21:39:59 * Antisoche taps his foot and whistles :)
21:42:37 <Antisoche> I've gotten 1 of my accounts up to date as of 2006 ... a ways yet to go, unfortunately.
21:58:08 <warlord> Why back so far? Why not start as of Jan 1, 2011? Or 2010 if you need last year's tax info?
21:58:41 <Antisoche> Because when you sell a stock in the U.S. you need to know how much you paid for it.
21:59:06 <Antisoche> So I bought a stock in 1997 and it paid me dividends every quarter.
21:59:37 <Antisoche> But instead of taking the cash, I took more stock. Which is essentially another 'buy' because the dividends were already taxed.
22:00:04 <warlord> Doesn't your brokerage keep that info for you?
22:00:15 <Antisoche> So I need to know the total that I paid for all the shares I have so that when I sell I can say - hey, I already paid taxes on all those dividends.
22:00:31 <warlord> anyways, I need to go. TTYT
22:00:34 *** warlord is now known as warlord-afk
22:00:37 <Antisoche> They do not. The keep individual records for the past 7 years or so.
22:00:45 <Antisoche> But they don't track my basis.
22:01:34 <Antisoche> Actually -- in my "Portfolio" view they do - but those aren't "official records" and once I sell the stock it disappears from the portfolio.
22:01:50 <Antisoche> Annoyingly.
22:02:52 <Antisoche> More annoyingly, they've gone through system upgrades and mergers that have resulted in some of that information being lost, so I already may be missing out on some important information.
22:04:02 <Antisoche> So once I realized that my old records were being removed as well, I figured it's time to actually get everything impoirted into something I can control. I didn't realize that they only went back a fixed amount of time.
22:04:45 <Antisoche> I'm not doing this for my bank accounts or anything -- just the investments.
22:05:30 <Antisoche> And I like to think of what I'm doing as "investing", so I tend very strongly towards "buy-and-hold".
22:06:51 <Antisoche> And part of "investing" to me means cash flow. If you have a stock that doesn't pay you anything, you're not investing. You're gambling on the existence of a bigger sucker to come along later.
22:07:28 <Antisoche> ... so I have a lot of transactions I need to account for. :-\
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