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Re: Debian GnuCash packages orphaned



On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 09:10:36AM -0700, William Ballard wrote:
> The only problem with GnuCash was the U/I: it made it exceedingly 
> awkward to work with large #s of accounts, because of all the modal 
> dialogs to enter them.  Nothing wrong with the concept.

As you said, what Money/Quicken call Categories are really accounts.  
The Account structure can really be inferred as you enter them.  One of 
the things I wished GnuCash would have done would be to automatically 
prune unused accounts.  They don't need to hide the double-entry-ness, 
but they do need to make it easy.  I forget the specifics, but to really 
do it right and make everything end up "properly zeroed out" you needed 
sometimes multiple accounts to represent the same entity -- I'm thinking 
of receiving a paycheck from an employer who also funds your 401K and 
pays your taxes.  Only your gross pay is "Accounts Payable."  There 
would be a super-account to represent your employer, who makes various 
transactions to your Tax account, 401K accounts payable, 
Gross-Pay-Accounts-Payable.  Then you have to have transactions to move 
things from the accounts payable to your Checking, Cash, or 401K Balance 
account.  Only *then* can you start to track how you keep the money.

I'm remembering now that's when I gave up -- I was going to have to 
enter multiple accounts per "entity", and there was no autopruning or 
bookeeping assistance, so it was going to be a maintenance nightmare.  
But really the whole account structure was easily inferrrable, it is 
doable with the right U/I.



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