GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 634181
Divide the Concept Guide into parts mentioned in §1.3
Last modified: 2018-06-29 22:46:43 UTC
The Concept Guide would benefit from formalising and clearly denoting the structure mentioned in §1.3 About this Book. The structure mentioned is: * Getting Started * Managing Your Personal Finances * Managing Your Business Finances because it would clearly show readers which chapters are necessary to get started, which are dealing with personal use, and which are dealing with business use.
Reading comments in the developers's list (vol 92, issue 12) made me think that this comment about depreciation should be added here. If another bug is more appropriate, then my apologies. When deciding which topics should be regarded as personal and which business in the GC Guide and Help manuals, the criterion to include or exclude should be (it seems to me) whether 'GAAP'[1] recognizes the inclusion or exclusion. I don't think it should be the fact that a user mechanically could insert a particular accounting technique into his/her own set of books. Since recording transactions accurately is just a matter of identifying the appropriate accounts and using debits and credits accurately to make the books show the content of the activity that occurred, any GC user can record any activity that catches his/her fancy. While there is no overt mandate to support GAAP officially in GC, it seems that we should subtly follow them to avoid accidentally leading astray new GC users not trained in accounting concepts and best practices. "Leading astray" for me means providing explanations and examples without explicit recommendations to accept example 'A' and avoid example 'Z'. I am not suggesting that every point in either manual have examples of accepted and non-accepted practice. Rather I am thinking that when we do give instruction and examples, we keep GAAP in mind. This could result in comments to the reader that use of a particular accounting practice is not normally a 'personal books' technique, whereas it is a heavily used business technique. Depreciation is a case in point. People maintaining books just for their private needs, normally don't use depreciation. Most such sets of records are kept on cash basis accounting, not an accrual basis. The very notion of depreciation is accrual basis. [An aside here: cash and accrual basis of accounting should be explained in the manuals in the section dealing with fundamental accounting concepts.] A very real and practical example supporting the reality of this distinction in US personal accounting is US federal tax return accounting. US citizens file form 1040 (or one of its specialized derivatives). Normal 1040 filing excludes any depreciation for the individual and the return is filed on the cash basis. When a person uses personal assets for a business-like function (say running a small business in his/her spare time or renting a room in his/her home), those situations are provided for by specialized subsidiary schedules (Schedule C for small business, Schedule D for property renting). These instances are not businesses in the sense that these activities are engaged in full-time and the person's livelihood is derived from them. When completing those schedules tax law does provide for depreciation within the confines of that schedule but not in the overall return explicitly, that is not in Schedule A for personal deductions. That IRS design means that the basic return is still cash basis, but the subsidiary schedule is permitted accrual basis practice for at least part of the person's activity. The tax payer would not engage in those schedules except for the tax benefit of reducing the income on which tax otherwise would be paid. The actual statements made in GC manuals do not have to go into all this, yet they should be clear enough to indicate what are usual best practices when there are no business-like activities occurring in a person's normal personal activities. Thus the proposal that is the substance of this bug is important. The above comments go to support the rationale to be used in setting up the personal versus business distinctions. I hope this triggers additional comments that work toward making the distinction between manual parts very clear to new and existing GC manual users. [1]Generally Accepted Accounting Principles
Created attachment 295617 [details] [review] Simple patch to add part designations at guide top level
Looks good to me. I have committed it to the gnucash-docs master branch. Thanks for your first improvement David !
Well, I like to think "first actual patch." ;)
First actual patch it is :) Congrats!
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