Concept Guide
From GnuCash
Contents
Road towards 2.0
This page is just a temporary page to keep track of the progress of the concept guide, as well as what needs to be done with it. Please feel free to add to it, with various thoughts and comments. Especially in things that needs to be clearer, or items that are missing etc.
Check out document
svn checkout http://svn.gnucash.org/repo/gnucash-docs/trunk gnucash-docs
Review
Please read through the svn version of Concept Guide (or from SVN as above) and indicate on this wiki which areas need to be reworked, modified, deleted, added, or left unchanged.
We can use this wiki page to discuss what should be in the guide, and which examples. Later on, we can use the gnucash-devel list to send out the raw text for quick reviews
Updating the concept guide
Please co-ordinate and inform of your intentions on gnucash-devel as well as on this wiki.
- Have a read of the Gnome documentation documents.
seems to be moved to http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-style-guide/stable/
- Ensure you have the latest copy from subversion
- svn update
- Update the Wiki, Move the chapter to Ongoing work
- Add revision and your name to the authors block. See sample below
- Modify the xml file, and check the result with yelp
- I am using scite as my editor, a plain editor like gedit, but it can "compress" the various tag pairs. Or use emacs with docbook extension
- yelp gnucash-guide.xml
- The XMLmind XML editor for Windows is free for personal use, and works fine. It also validates as well as clean up the XML code.
- www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor
- For screenshots
- Ensure you are using the default Gnome theme (ClearLooks)
- Make the screenshots as small as possible
- Use GIMP to take the screen shots (Aquire with delay)
- Use Gimp --> Image --> Scale to ensure the width is max 510 pixels.
- Save screenshot as a png file.
- Ensure you are using the standard C locale. LANG=C ./gnucash
- Spell Check the document.
- Clean up docbook tags
- xmllint --valid --noout gnucash-guide.xml
- yelp gnucash-guide.xml
- xmlto -o /tmp txt gnucash-guide.xml
- Prepare a text diff (if new file, or major formatting changes)
- Prepare an subversion diff
svn diff > MyChanges.diff
- Double check that the svn version has not been modified.
- Submit your contribution to the GnuCash team
- Send the text based diff file to the -devel list (if major formatting changes or new file)
- Send the subversion diff file to -devel (if minor changes)
- Send the xml (if new file or if you did major formatting changes) to -devel
- Send the screenshots directly to Chris, and other interested parties after some time passed to let comments have a chance to filter back.
Areas that need work
The following items have missing text in the existing guide, or just need more work
- Index
- Search
- Bugs
- Scripts
- gnc-fq-check
- gnc-fq-dump
- gnc-fq-helper
- gnc-fq-update
- gnc-test-env
- Chapter 7
- Entering a Payment Schedule
- Monthly Payments (How-To)
- Final Payment (How-To)
- Putting It All Together
- Entering a Payment Schedule
- Chapter 8
- Configuring Finance::Quote
Section 8.6.3.2 says:For stock accounts that have already been setup, edit the account and select the Get On-line Quotes box.
However, there is no "Get On-line Quotes" box in the "edit account" popup. - Downloading historical prices
- 8.6.5 Making Stock Value Reports
Tell how to get the report popup. - Recording Stock Splits and Mergers (How-To)
- Recording Employee Stock Plans (Discussion)
- Stock Options (How-To)
- Reconciling with the Brokerage Statement (How-To)
- Currency trading
- Configuring Finance::Quote
- Chapter 10
- 10.7. Tracking Currency Investments (How-To)
- Appendix A Importing
- A.2 Organization of QIF Files (Discussion)
- A.3 Common Duplication Issues (Discussion)
- A.4 Checking QIF Data (Discussion)
- OFX features
- HBCI
Ready for release
The following chapters have been review/modified and are ready for release
Ready for review
The following chapters have been modified and are ready for review
- 1. Overview
- 2. The Basics
- 3. Accounts
- 4. Transactions
- 5. Checkbook
- 6. Credit Cards
- 7. Loans
- 8. Investments
- 9. Capital Gains
- 10. Multiple Currencies
- 11. Depreciation
- 12. Accounts Receivable
- 13. Accounts Payable
- 14. Payroll
Ongoing work
Remaining work
The chapters below have not been modified/checked since the 1.8 series.
General
- Add screenshots for the budget chapter
Personal
Business
Appendix
- A. Migration Guide
- B. Frequent Asked Questions (we need to update with the valid FQA)
Thoughts and comments
- Reports -
- Add a sub chapter in each chapter regarding to Reports valid to current chapter
- Add a separate chapter with an overview of the current reports
- Make examples with separate accounts for each stocks/brokearage income/expense, so we can track each stocks costs
- Ensure the account structure and names follow the default convention (Change "Starting Values" to "Opening Balances" for instance)
- One datafile per chapter, and the chapter has to explain how to create the datafile with all its entries.
- If you have multiple bank accounts with one bank the following should be an example?
- Asset:Bank:CitiBank:Saving
- Asset:Bank:CitiBank:ATM
- Multiple currencies
- the business features are all currently single-currency reference
- Equity:Opening Balance:USD
- Equity:Opening Balance:AUD
- Income:Saving:CitiBank:Interest (where CitiBank is all in USD)
- Expenses:Bank:CitiBank:Interest (where CitiBank is all in USD)
- Expenses:Bank:CitiBank:Charges (where CitiBank is all in USD)
- Income:Saving:Boom:Interest:HKD (boom has one USD and one HKD account)
- Income:Saving:Boom:Interest:USD (boom has one USD and one HKD account)
- Investments
- Verify Capital Gains/Dividens in reports. Details
- When you create a commodity, you should also directly create the Dividend account
- How to Add / Remove shares
- How to move shares between brokerage accounts.
- How to do imediate re-invest dividend
- How to buy shares with NON-Default currency
- Current workaround: Buy the shares from the BANK account, and right click on the stock purchase row and select "Edit Exchange Rate"
Default currency AUD (not HKD)
Commodity Stock_1
Assets:Banks:Boom:HKD
Assets:Brokerage Accounts:Boom:Stock_1
Expenses:Investments:Commission:Boom_HKD
Income:Investments:Dividend:Boom_HKD:Stock_1
Open Assets:Banks:Boom:HKD account
Buy Stocks
Assets:Banks:Boom:HKD Withdrawal 10,000
Expenses:Investments:Commission:Boom_HKD Deposit 500
Assets:Brokerage Accounts:Boom:Stock_1 Deposit 9,500
Right click on the last row, and select "Edit Exchange Data"
In the following pop up window, enter the actual number of stocks in the last entry box
(not the default entry box)
- Assets
- Personal loan to a friend (Assets:Money owed to you:<Friends name>)
- Good example here
- Depreciation of private assets like Car and other items (house, horse etc)
- Personal loan to a friend (Assets:Money owed to you:<Friends name>)
- QIF Import
- Migrating from Quicken/Money
- I think we need to come with more details on this area? (expand on 2.7. Importing QIF Files, and Appendix A)
- Ensure that the numbers in the QIF file do not contain " " (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121443)
- Sample of QIF file, and links to more samples
- Migrating from Quicken/Money
