On Sun, 02 Jul 2000, Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> > There is virtually no value in having a large number of "accounts" if I
> > cannot automate the summary of those accounts for the purpose at hand.
> >
> > The way I summarize things has to vary with the purpose.
>
> Perhaps I misspoke. What I am NOT keen to do is provide a
> drool-proof "tax report". There are too many jurisidictions, too many
> variations in book-keeping styles, and too many other variables.
> What I am keen to do is to make things sufficiently configurable that
> the other kinds of reports (primarily P&L and perhaps investment
> reports), when appropriate accounts are selected, can provide the
> correct information.
In particular, I need to be able to associate some "Tax Report Identifier"
with each account and produce a machine readable report that associates that
identifier with the income or expense.
> Yes, that's a good question - how do we track an association between
> income and expense accounts and the stock account, where transactions
> associated with that stock do not necessarily affect the value of it.
> This, however, has implications beyond the reporting system - it's
> just as much an engine issue.
In many respects, it is (almost) all an engine issue.
Most of the "reports" are just a customization of
1) Select some subset of the LEs.
2) Order them according to some tree representation.
3) Summarize (subtotal) each node of the tree.
4) Suppress some of the detail
5) Format the remainder for viewing
The report generator does #5 and possibly some or all of #4.
However the first 3 steps should be done in the engine (as directed by the
report generator)
> Would the ability to build an account hierachy, perhaps using
> drag-and-drop on a tree widget, on a report-specific basis be a way to
> meet this need? I can see the need - for instance, if you wanted to
> account for a specific project you'd want to extract just certain
> accounts possibly buried deep in the account hierachy.
This would work for a static set of accounts. However, the bigger problem is
handling the placement of new accounts in the appropriate place in each
report. Consider what happens when I purchase a new stock, hire a new
employee, etc. In order to keep track of that new entity, I have to create
not one but a whole group of new accounts. Each of these accounts will hae
its place in each of the reports. I don't want to have to do anything more
than "use a template" to have them inserted in the appropriate place in every
report.
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