GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 122895
general ledger should be named journal
Last modified: 2018-06-29 20:37:38 UTC
Journal is the accounting term for one big list of transactions of all accounts sorted by date. General ledger is the accounting term for many lists, for each account there is one list of its transactions. You may check this on sites like http://faculty.brenau.edu/wentworth/ac201/ch2.htm http://www.gnuenterprise.org/~neilt/packages/finance/package-doc/Accounting/introduction.html In GnuCash the term general ledger is used for a window that actually is a journal. Therefore the GUI labels should be changed (and the help manual updated accordingly).
*** Bug 144266 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
There is now a seperate 'general ledger' and 'general journal' account. The 'general journal' appears to be what you describe as a journal. The 'general ledger' appears to need some work: it looks like it makes many lists, but still makes multiple lists for each account. I suppose all lists for one account should be merged?
The attached patch renames the General Ledger (in tools) to General Journal. That is also consistent to the reports (now "General Journal" report and "General Journal" tool are the same, "General Ledger" report is different).
Created attachment 279798 [details] [review] rename General Ledger to General Journal
Thanks for the patch, but we need corresponding changes in gnucash-docs. What's more, I think we should rename the constants GENERAL_LEDGER and INCOME_LEDGER to GENERAL_JOURNAL and INCOME_JOURNAL, and consider giving them separate titles.
I agree to GENERAL_JOURNAL but didn't research INCOME_LEDGER/JOURNAL. We will get at least 5 dirty strings in our .po files. IIRC in de.po since over 10 years we translate it wrong, to get the right meaning. I assume we were not shure enough, to question the original strings. But http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_journal vs. General_ledger I came here today because I stumbled over a false "correct" translation in guide/de/oview. greping guide i find ch_oview.xml:286 help has more: grep -ni "general ledger" *.xml Help_ch_GUIMenus.xml:1367: <para><guimenuitem>General Ledger</guimenuitem></para></entry> Help_ch_GUIMenus.xml:1751: <entry><para><guimenuitem>General Ledger</guimenuitem></para></entry> Help_ch_GUIMenus.xml:2004: <title>Account Register/General Ledger</title> Help_ch_GUIMenus.xml:2007: <title>Account Register & General Ledger Window</title> Help_ch_Reports.xml:304: <para>General Ledger:</para> Help_ch_Transactions.xml:794: <title>General Ledger</title> Help_ch_Transactions.xml:795: <para>The General Ledger is an advanced register used to enter transactions without needing to open Help_ch_Transactions.xml:796: individual accounts. The General Ledger shows the transaction entries for all accounts on one register.</para> Help_ch_Transactions.xml:798: <para>Entering transactions in the General Ledger is more complicated than entering them in the individual Help_ch_Transactions.xml:799: account registers. The advantage is the General Ledger provides a more comprehensive view of the Help_ch_Transactions.xml:802: <para>The General Ledger defaults to showing only the previous month of transactions. This is changeable
(In reply to comment #5) > Thanks for the patch, but we need corresponding changes in gnucash-docs. What's > more, I think we should rename the constants GENERAL_LEDGER and INCOME_LEDGER > to GENERAL_JOURNAL and INCOME_JOURNAL, and consider giving them separate > titles. I have pushed the changes for General Ledger->General Journal. What name would you propose for the Income related terms ? Would "Income Journal" be an appropriate title for the register that gets opened ?
Geert, I see your change in gnucash-docs/master. Where are the changes in the code?
> Geert, I see your change in gnucash-docs/master. Where are the changes in > the code? In this commit: https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/commit/8f717691b788081ae3fe2ddf3d0d49ff7ad4de48(In reply to Frank H. Ellenberger from comment #8)
(In reply to Geert Janssens from comment #7) This questions is still left unanswered (and as non-native English speaking person I can't answer it myself): > What name would you propose for the Income related terms ? > Would "Income Journal" be an appropriate title for > the register that gets opened ?
AFAICT INCOME_LEDGER, SEARCH_LEDGER, and PORTFOLIO_LEDGER are just enum names that are used internally to select how a particular register page is laid out. We can safely convert them to .*_JOURNAL without changing any strings. Or not. Since they're purely internal it might not matter. FWIW, my college accounting textbook (R. F. Salmondson, James Don Edwards, and Roger G. Hermanson, *A Survey of Basic Accounting, 4th Ed.*, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, IL, 1985, p39-40): An Account is a container for records of credits and debits for a particular category of activity; the Ledger is the collection of all of the accounts, and a Journal is a document of transactions showing all accounts involved in each. It doesn't define the term "register". Those terms are a bit at odds with our usage in GnuCash. We can consider changing our usage to avoid making crazy potential future contributors who are actual qualified accountants, but I don't think that it's worth keeping this bug open.
(In reply to John Ralls from comment #11) > AFAICT INCOME_LEDGER, SEARCH_LEDGER, and PORTFOLIO_LEDGER are just enum > names that are used internally to select how a particular register page is > laid out. We can safely convert them to .*_JOURNAL without changing any > strings. Or not. Since they're purely internal it might not matter. > > FWIW, my college accounting textbook (R. F. Salmondson, James Don Edwards, > and Roger G. Hermanson, *A Survey of Basic Accounting, 4th Ed.*, Richard D. > Irwin, Inc., Homewood, IL, 1985, p39-40): An Account is a container for > records of credits and debits for a particular category of activity; the > Ledger is the collection of all of the accounts, and a Journal is a document > of transactions showing all accounts involved in each. It doesn't define the > term "register". > Thanks, that's informative. > Those terms are a bit at odds with our usage in GnuCash. We can consider > changing our usage to avoid making crazy potential future contributors who > are actual qualified accountants, but I don't think that it's worth keeping > this bug open. It's not only about qualified accountants as potential contributors. The way these terms are used in module names inside gnucash has cost me countless of hours trying to make sense of what each module was supposed to do. Given that I'm not native speaking makes it even harder, because the names are already confusing by themselves for me. The fact they're not used as is common practise doesn't help :( Rants aside, I do agree there's no need to keep the bug open as there's no user visible aspect left to fix. It's something to keep in mind when we get around to finishing the register rewrite (journal rewrite?).
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