2012-04-10 GnuCash IRC logs
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07:17:47 <Fabzgy> Do you know if GNU Cash can be used for accountance for german GmbH?
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10:26:47 <opalepatrick> just stting up gnucash for self employed in Europe first time. Is there a good tutorial anywhere that looks at gnucash with a euro head, you know VAT, tax etc?
10:37:54 <warlord> There might be some docs on the wiki
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10:55:59 <opalepatrick> thanks warlord - I saw your comments re working in more than one currency. I occasionally charge in sterling but everything else is in euros, but my transactions are handful per month. Do you think I need to set up separate accounts, or am I making a mountain out of a molehill.
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11:01:22 <warlord> Probably a mountain out of a molehill. IMHO it's easier if you convert to your home currency, but the key is knowing where to make that conversion
11:10:19 <opalepatrick> Thanks Warlord, I do so few transactions that it would be easy enough to just do it after it has passes though my bank account and take the real value there. So thanks for the advice. :-)
11:10:36 <opalepatrick> *passed
11:19:05 <warlord> * nods *
11:19:30 <warlord> It might be harder if you have to invoice in alternate currencies.
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12:07:21 <FelixAkk> hi guys, I´m programmer, but I´m a newb to GnuCash
12:07:43 <FelixAkk> (actually writing a app to generate invoices in LaTeX)
12:07:48 <FelixAkk> but I had some questions
12:08:13 * warlord is waiting to see the questions
12:08:22 <FelixAkk> first: is there a way to make GnuCash control the document numbering, right now I enter it manually, have to remember to increment it, and look up what the last is
12:08:30 <FelixAkk> this all seems a bit clumsy and error prone
12:08:56 <warlord> Yes, just leave it blank and gnucash will auto-increment and fill it in.
12:09:00 <FelixAkk> :D
12:09:03 <FelixAkk> brilliant
12:09:28 <FelixAkk> so it just queries all invoices, takes the largest doc. number and runs with that one right?
12:09:42 <warlord> No, it uses an internal counter.
12:10:00 <warlord> So if you have manually set numbers on your own GnuCash wont know about that.
12:10:22 <FelixAkk> hm ok, that seems fine
12:10:24 <warlord> you will have to reset the starting number. I don't recall if there's a way to manage that in the UI in 2.4 or only in 2.6
12:11:25 <FelixAkk> yeah I can find something in the preferences about it
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12:12:23 <warlord> Okay.
12:12:39 <FelixAkk> thanks warlord!
12:12:44 <warlord> any other questions?
12:13:20 <FelixAkk> well, I´m still finishing my app, but I will have quite some questions on the architecture of GnuCash´ source along the way
12:13:39 <FelixAkk> any programmers in here that are familiar with that an I are available to be bothered with questions? :P
12:13:41 <warlord> ok
12:14:08 <warlord> How are you reading the gnucash data? Wouldn't it be better to create an "invoice report" that output LaTeX instead of HTML?
12:16:08 <FelixAkk> sorry I´m using the Dutch GnuCash (yeah Iḿ heavily against not running software in English, but for financing I really need the familiar Dutch terms around), so is ¨invoice report¨ what happens when you press Ctrl+P?
12:17:13 <warlord> Yes
12:17:30 <FelixAkk> ah yeah, thatś basically the idea
12:17:33 <warlord> Well, it's what happens when you press the 'print' button from a GnuCash INvoice
12:17:39 <FelixAkk> of what I´m trying to write
12:17:46 <warlord> (I'm not 100% sure if C-P is the same)
12:17:54 <FelixAkk> C-P?
12:18:05 <FelixAkk> oh Ctrl+P :)
12:18:17 <warlord> yeah.
12:18:21 <warlord> C-P == Ctrl-P
12:18:29 <warlord> (too lazy to type this morning)
12:18:36 <FelixAkk> no but it´s exactly that, but then instead of it generating HTML -> LaTeX
12:18:59 <FelixAkk> I like pretty typesetting and am a pretty big fan of the while TeX system :)
12:19:16 <FelixAkk> and the template I have atm looks a lot more professional
12:20:37 <warlord> I'm sure. My point was that it would be nice if there were a "Reports -> Business -> LaTeX Invoice" that would output (La)TeX instead of HTML
12:21:05 <FelixAkk> www.aerix.nl/public/invoice_template_aerix.pdf to give you an idea
12:21:50 <FelixAkk> something like that seems like a good way to access it through the GUI
12:22:26 <FelixAkk> when everything is working and the rough edges have been trimmed I´m looking to make something like that
12:22:28 <warlord> in what language are you writing your generator?
12:23:00 <FelixAkk> it´s based on an existing one, which is really ugly/limited in my opinion, in Perl
12:23:35 <FelixAkk> am I correct that most of GnuCash is written in Perl?
12:23:53 <warlord> Um, no.
12:23:58 <warlord> None of gnucash is written in perl
12:24:04 <warlord> Most of GnuCash is written in C
12:24:09 <warlord> Some is written in Scheme
12:24:29 <warlord> The only PERL in GnuCash is Finance::Quote, and that's called as an external helper
12:24:30 <FelixAkk> ah ok
12:25:15 <warlord> Easiest integration as a report would be to write it in Scheme
12:25:28 <warlord> But it might be possible to write it as a C plugin
12:25:28 <FelixAkk> ah, thanks :)
12:26:14 <FelixAkk> right now itś bascially some Perl files with a command line interface: gc2latex <.tex template file> <.gnucash account file> <invoice id>
12:26:41 <warlord> And you're assuming the file is uncompressed XML?
12:26:58 <FelixAkk> no
12:27:13 <warlord> So you could read a GnuCash MySQL database?
12:27:23 <FelixAkk> this is the interface that was already in place when I picked it up and started changing it
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12:27:36 <FelixAkk> I don´t really know XD
12:27:37 <warlord> Oh, you're working from the old gc2latex.
12:27:51 <warlord> I suspect it is assuming XML, possibly assuming uncompressed
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12:28:30 <FelixAkk> but I´m trying to evaluate whatś more worth the effort, running with what I have and and making it work agian, or extending on GnuCash more natively
12:29:10 <FelixAkk> jep itś the old gc2latex
12:30:07 <FelixAkk> damn the way Pidgin is messing up the apestrophes and turning them into accented letter is annoying :)
12:31:50 <FelixAkk> anyways, I have no experience with GnuCash, so I don´t know how hard it would be to make this work
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12:33:58 <FelixAkk> and it´s actually really simple with LaTeX and a template; all I need to to is take the invoice objects, get data from them, do some string replacements in the invoice, and also construct a invoice TeX environment
12:36:22 <FelixAkk> which is actually really simple:
12:36:24 <FelixAkk> \begin{invoice}{Euro}{19}
12:36:24 <FelixAkk> \ProjectTitle{Project Name}
12:36:24 <FelixAkk> % Task,Rate/Unit,Count
12:36:24 <FelixAkk> \Fee{Did task}{25.00}{3}
12:36:24 <FelixAkk> \Fee{Bought thing}{150.00}{7}
12:36:25 <FelixAkk> \end{invoice}
12:36:36 <FelixAkk> wups, it broke that up in seperate lines
12:37:20 <FelixAkk> calculations and VAT is done by TeX
12:47:03 <FelixAkk> my gosh I´m just running through some options and the Report -> Business items and damn this is a mess XD
12:50:34 <FelixAkk> also, I know the printf formatting convention, but how do I use it in the Options/Counters fields
12:51:15 <FelixAkk> say I want my invoices to be %YEAR%.%INVOICE_ID%
12:52:02 <FelixAkk> %Invoce_Date_Year%.%Invoice_ID% (clarification)
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12:58:48 <FelixAkk> why on earth are preferences and report-options accessed through different menu items and have different dialogs XD and then I the Dutch translation refers to preferences for report-options
12:59:16 <FelixAkk> would be a lot easier if it were just a tab in the prefernces dialog
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13:05:19 <warlord> Report options are per-report.
13:05:41 <warlord> Preferences *used* to use the same UI (File -> Properties does use the same UI).
13:06:15 <warlord> It doesn't make sense to have report options in the preferences, because report options are per-report-instance. You can run the same report multiple times and have different configurations.
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13:12:19 <FelixAkk> hm ok
13:12:34 <FelixAkk> I´m not sure I understand yet
13:13:41 <FelixAkk> right now I´m just trying to generate an invoice through but it keeps saying I haven´t set the invoicenumber in the options
13:14:33 <warlord> Right, so click on the report options and then select the invoice you want to "print"
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13:22:10 <FelixAkk> ah I see
13:25:11 <FelixAkk> Q: How can I delete an Invoice, Customer, Vendor, or Employee? A: Quick answer: you can't. There are no plans to ever allow you to delete these objects.
13:25:14 <FelixAkk> quite baffling :/
13:25:22 <warlord> Why?
13:25:35 <warlord> The logic to make sure it is safe to delete is hard.
13:25:36 <FelixAkk> I´ve just been messing arond, experimenting with some options and created a whole bunch of junk invoices
13:25:40 <FelixAkk> and no way to delete them :/
13:25:54 <warlord> And you did this in a production data file?
13:25:57 <warlord> Revert to a backup.
13:32:23 <FelixAkk> I didn´t like it making such a huge amount of backups, I version control stuff I want to have backups of, so I disabled that
13:33:03 <warlord> Well, then, revert to a previous version control checkpoint.
13:33:47 <FelixAkk> I haven´t got it in version control because I hadn´t entered that much stuff yet, so I´ll just do that again in a new .gnucash
13:33:58 <FelixAkk> but why would you want to restrain the user from deleting ivoices?
13:34:23 <FelixAkk> or any of those matters
13:34:38 <warlord> Like I said, the logic of making sure it's safe to do so is hard.
13:34:39 <FelixAkk> from the Q I see it also applies for Customer, Vendor and Employee
13:34:54 <warlord> So it was just easier to punt.
13:34:58 <FelixAkk> why is it safe when the user can´t delete it?
13:35:25 <warlord> It's safe because you cannot destroy your data consistency
13:36:31 <warlord> You wont leave dangling objects. You wont leave dangling pointers..
13:37:14 <FelixAkk> Hm yeah I see how that could cause problems but it seems to completely exclude the usecase where the user knows what it´s doing and just wants to delete it
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13:37:59 <warlord> because 99% of the time users dont know what they are doing. For that 1% of the time that they do, they can just re-use the objects.
13:38:11 <warlord> Or hide them by marking them inactive
13:39:03 <warlord> ... or know to use a test data file for test data
13:39:41 <FelixAkk> Or just tell them about it, like when you about:config in Firefox, and after confirmation, provide them the option
13:40:16 <warlord> patches always welcome.
13:41:14 <FelixAkk> Perhaps when I got this TeX invoice thing working and I´m familiar with how to extend the GUI I´ll have a look
13:42:55 <warlord> Any option to delete biz objects would require, IMNSHO, a 10' high jump before being enabled -- and perhaps the 10' high jump on every instance. It's extremely dangerous for data integrity.
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13:45:49 <FelixAkk> Hm yeah, this is perhaps something that you´d only do as a programmer when you know the implications for data integrity
13:46:16 <FelixAkk> But somehow the ordinary user should know
13:47:02 <FelixAkk> Tough point from a usability design perspective
13:49:06 <warlord> Right, and doing all the logic to make sure it is safe for a regular user was very hard.. So it was just easier to disallow it.
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13:52:21 <FelixAkk> Yeah you´re right about that
13:52:36 <FelixAkk> would be a huge workload for an ill used feature
13:53:19 <warlord> Exactly. Which is why I punted on it
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14:17:19 <Janno> please have a look at http://pastebin.com/Z320wn1z - It might be a problem with the python bindings but I'm not sure how to further investigate this
14:20:50 <warlord> Janno: I suggest sending to gnucash-devel
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14:52:02 <Janno> warlord, done.
15:05:44 <Janno> okay, my message awaits moderator approval.. I guess I should have registered first. is anybody actively moderating the list?
15:08:42 <warlord> Yes, it'll get through within 24 hours.
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16:51:27 <gour1> /disconnect gnome
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21:02:01 <bitwise> 2.4.10 (OSX): I'm creating my first invoice. Added a company (with USD), Am entering the invoice info, and I'm unable to select the "Assets:Accounts Receivable" account that was created from the business account hierarchy creation.
21:02:26 <bitwise> the A/R account is of type A/R and its currency is set to USD (same as customer).
21:03:28 <bitwise> I *do* get a list of some Asset accounts I have created as well as the Income:(subs) hierarchy created with the "business accounts".
21:03:36 <bitwise> oh, and also Liabilities:Credit Card.
21:03:56 <bitwise> What am I missing? How can I get this invoice pointed at the A/R account so I can post it?
21:06:20 <warlord> bitwise: are you in the invoice window? Line items there are for your INCOME account. Your A/R account gets selected during POST
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21:32:44 <bitwise> Hmm, what makes an account an "income" account? Income is not a type I seem to be able to select when creating an account, and I don't see any flags to toggle in the account property dialogs?
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21:39:10 <bitwise> I just enabled the "Type" column in the account hierarchy view, while I see "Income" as type for accounts that are in the Income: hierarchy, I'm a little confused why some of my asset accounts under the "Asset:" hierarchy show up in the list (as well as that Liabilities:Credit Card account (of type Credit Card). What would make those show up?
21:42:43 <warlord> Sorry, Gotta run. Please read the concepts & tutorial guide.
21:43:00 <bitwise> Ok, I sort of answered part of that, Income/Expense are shown as Type when creating a new account under the Income hierarchy.
21:43:24 <warlord> Right. hierarchies are limited by type.
21:43:31 <bitwise> So my last question would be: Why are Asset type accounts showing up in the drop down selector for the income account field in the invoice.
21:43:39 <warlord> The invoice is asking you to list all your line items by income category.
21:43:46 <warlord> then you post that to A/R to instantiate the transaction.
21:43:57 <warlord> Because you could be buying inventory.
21:44:11 <bitwise> Bueno.
21:44:15 <warlord> (or rather, you could be SELLING inventory)
21:44:25 <warlord> gotta run. sorry.. already late.
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21:44:32 <bitwise> Thanks Dereck.
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