Thanks for this suggestion. I'm unsure whether this actually makes a lot of sense, though. The whole point of the "accounting period" is that it's a book-wide setting; you can always have numbers calculated for different periods by running reports for the period you like. ALso, having both personal and business accounts in the same book is probably not quite the intended way of handling this.

Thanks Christian. Maybe I'm getting lost in terminology here. I was suggesting different periods for different gnucash files. I use the word "file" for a related collection of accounts. I think you use the word book to mean the same thing. I cannot find where you store the setting for accounting period but I believe this setting is currently application-wide and therefore applies to all the books you run with gnucash.

I cannot find any reference to accounting periods in the "book" files in the ~/.gnucash/books folder, which is where it might be best stored and so unique to each book.

Actually, "In the book" could also imply "in the data file" which wouldn't be in ~/.gnucash/ -- it's... wherever you told GnuCash to store your data file.  For example, all the File -> Properties entries are stored there.

Many thanks Derek, I think this aids my understanding and perhaps I can now phrase the issue using your terminology (I shall assume that "book" and "data file" are interchangeable terms):

Suppose I have two sets of accounts and I call the gnucash books moneypot1 and moneypot2. Data files of type XML are created for each new book (I don't think location is not relevant to this discussion).

There is a plain text file for each book stored as ~/.gnucash/books/moneypot1 and ~/.gnucash/books/moneypot2. These seem to contain mostly presentational settings for how your last session looked.

File, Properties gives access to information also unique to each book (e.g. Company Name) but this time the resulting changes are stored in each book's own XML file (moneypot1 or moneypot2).

Edit, Preferences stores information which is globally applicable to all books (moneypot1 and moneypot2 for the purposes of this debate) but I cannot find where any resulting changes are stored (perhaps in /etc/gnucash/... ?).

Accounting Period information is managed through Edit, Preferences and as a result applies to all books (our two are moneypot1 and moneypot2).

So my suggestion can be re-phrased: please store Accounting Period information in ~/.gnucash/books/moneypot1 etc. or in the XML data file called moneypot1, moneypot2, etc. so that the period is specific to the book in question.
Kind Regards

Edit -> Preferences contents are stored in GConf.

Thanks Derek. Useful to know but what of the suggestion itself?

I think it's a reasonable suggestion.

Honestly, I think there are a number of items under Edit -> Preferences that probably belong under File -> Properties instead because they are actually data-file properties, not user preferences.

Thanks for that. Agree with your comments too about other settings that could usefully change from Preferences to Properties. Look forward to seeing these enhancements in the next release. Anything I can do to help - user testing perhaps?

Well, first, I wouldn't hold my breath for this to be corrected in the "next release".

As for how you can help -- you can help by going through the preferences and cataloging each preference into three categories:

1) User preference.  A preference that applies to a user across all datafiles
2) User Datafile Preference.  A preference that applies only to one data file, but each user could decide to set this differently
3) File Property.  A "preference" that really is a property of the book or data file, across all users of that data file.

I've reviewed the current "File, Properties" and "Edit, Preferences" options and this is my view of how they could more usefully be re-arranged:

There are twelve tabs under "Edit, Preferences", I see eleven of them are more useful under "File, Properties".

The one remaining tab is the General tab and its options could be seen as relevant to all books or datafiles (same thing?). One exception to this is the third option on this tab called "Perform account list setup on new file". Logically, I see this as belonging to the dialogue started when choosing "File, New, New File". This is the place where you choose the accounts you want set up in your new file so should be the place where you may decide to start a new file with no accounts at all initially (can't imagine why you would want to though!).

How does this translate to your three categories above? This, of course is my opinion:

1. User Preference: This comprises the current "Edit, Preferences, General" tab only but without the "account list" option described above.
2. User Datafile Preference: This is made up from the current "File, Properties" plus the other eleven tabs from "Edit, Preferences".
3. File Property: I'm a little unclear about your meaning here. Are you referring to more than one user set up on your PC? If so, I don't see how your application currently deals with multi users (but then I've never looked working as a single user on my own PC). Would it make sense for me to suggestion that in a multi user environment each user has both 1 and 2 as I've defined them above, separately available to their ID?

Hope that helps. Kind Regards

What is the status of this bug? I see that it is over two years old and I am still experiencing the same problem.

If I switch between my personal and company accounts I have to keep changing the accounting period.

I am using version 2.2.29. Is the next release likely to include any of Kevan's suggestions?

I know that sn November 2007, Derek advised that I shouldn't hold my breathe awaiting the changes we discussed, but here we are in May 2015 on version 2.6.6 and I'd still be keen to see such changes.

GnuCash is still streets ahead of anything else I've tried. What are the chances of these further improvements?

Regards
Kevan Harding

*** Bug 744283 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 775177 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. The new URL for this bug is https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=493789. Please continue processing the bug there and please update any external references or bookmarks.