GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 775580
Inaccurate information provided for "Common Accounts" when using "New Account Hierarchy Setup"
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:52:24 UTC
When creating a new set of accounts, there's a wizzard that guides one through the process. There are a choice of approximately 17 categories * A Simple Checkbook * Business Accounts .... * Common Accounts ... * UK VAT record The "Common accounts" category is ticked by default. The description for "Common accounts" is "Most users will want to select this set of accounts. It includes most commonly used accounts (checking, savings, cash, credit card, income, common expenses)" In the book "Gnucash 2.4 Small Business Accounting: Beginner's Guide" by Ashok Ramachandran (2011), it specifically says the "Common Accounts" category are NOT appropriate for a business. Whilst having limited accounting knowledge myself, I think this is true. This creates an account for "Hobbies" which is certainly inappropriate for a business. If one selects "Common accounts", and "Business", one gets an excessive number that should be deleted. I'm sure if you ask N people for how to rephrase this, you will get > N different answers, but this is my attempt. "Most personal users, but not business users, will want to select this set of accounts. It includes the most commonly used personal accounts * Checking (or current) account * Savings account * Cash * Credit card * Income * Common expenses."
I'd like this to be ignored. GnuCash is used by people from many countries and jurisdictions and should not be re-aligned on a whim. Further, the book mentioned is not, as far as I know, acknowledged as authoritative by the people that actually do the real work of maintaining GnuCash or even those that use it and are involved in it's use. commonly used will always depend on the person and their circumstances, I see no need for change in this case
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=775580. Please continue processing the bug there and please update any external references or bookmarks.