Hi, Am Donnerstag, 12. August 2010 um 16:46:47 schrieb Paul Schwartz: > Gnucash [and traditional US/English bookeeping] have 3 categories/types of > accounts: assets/liabilities/equity.
traditional != US/English bookeeping You will find the first description of modern (!=Hammurabi's) bookeeping in Luca Pacioli: Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalità; Venetia [IT] 1494; Repro e.g. ISBN 88-317-6008-4 If you open http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_sheet and switch to any other european language, you will see the pair Attivo - Passivo on the first level and then on the next level Passive split in equity and liability. > It seems that Belgium accounting has > only 2. That's a fundamental mismatch. The accounting equation for Gnucash > is A = L + E. It seems as if the Belgium accounting equation is A = L where > L is the L + E of Gnucash/US accounting. Not the belgium (and all other continental) accounting has a mismatch, but the english has a shortage - it is missing the term Passive. > Perhaps for Belgium COA you should make an account called Equity that is a > subaccount of Liabilities and not have any account that is of the Gnucash > type Equity. > > HTH > > Paul > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > > > From: Geert Janssens <janssens-ge...@telenet.be> > > To: gnucash-u...@gnucash.org > > Sent: Thu, August 12, 2010 8:00:32 AM > > Subject: Equity vs liability > > > > Hi, > > > > I'm in the process of creating a new chart of accounts tailored to > > Belgian law. I am basing my work on the normalized chart of accounts that > > can be downloaded from the government's website. I'm having some trouble > > with setting > > > > account types the way I want though. > > > > Here's the thing: > > In Belgium (and perhaps in other countries as well) a balance is usually > > represented like this: > > Assets | Liabilities > > -------+------------ > > ... | Equity > > . | Other liabilities > > . | ... > > > > (In Dutch this would be: > > Activa | Passiva > > -------+---------- > > ... | Eigen vermogen > > . | Vreemd vermogen (leningen ed) > > . | ... > > So there is a translation error in many european languages of GnuCash, if they use Passiva (Creditkant) as translation of Liability (= Vreemd vermogen). I saw the same in Dansk a short time ago. I german we fixed it a time ago, then it reappeared somehow, but should be fixed now. > > So to represent this in GnuCash, I wanted to create this hiearchy: > > + Assets (account type Assets) > > + Liabilities (account type Liabilities) > > + Equity (account type Equity) > > + Other liabilities (account type Liabilities) > > > > I can't however. GnuCash won't allow me to put my equity accounts under > > liabilities. > > > > So what's wrong here ? > > * Am I trying to misrepresent something here ? Do I use the wrong term > > to translate "Passiva" into an account type ? > > * Or is GnuCash just not properly adapted for the Belgian situation ? This can be discussed in https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421766 - support "Passive" account type (able to contain both Liability and Equity accounts) > > Thanks for your feedback. > > > > Geert Because the translation error is less a user question, copying to gnucash-devel. Cheers Frank _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
