> On Sep 6, 2021, at 12:22 PM, Borden via gnucash-devel
> <gnucash-devel@gnucash.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>> I see references/comments in the PR referring to ?Fiscal? year. Just my
>> view but ?Fiscal? seems to be one of those terms that are rarely used by
>> anyone except federal treasurers and finance reporters. Perhaps more
>> understandable to use FinYear / FinancialYear or similar.
>>
> Well, "Fiscal Year" is the proper terminology in IFRS and US GAAP in the same
> way that "Assets", "Liabilities", "Equity", "Debits" and "Credits" are. So,
> unless you want to confuse and irritate people who've been raised to use the
> official terminology, I'd avoid using the "layman's terminology."
>
> And fiscal year support is something that transcends the Australian tax
> system. Entities are free to pick their own fiscal year and, in fact, are
> encouraged to pick one _after_ their busy season so there are fewer
> distractions when they do their closing procedures.
>
> So every GNUCash file really should track the entity's year-end (defaulting
> to the calendar) and adjust reports accordingly by default. That how I learnt
> accounting, at least.
Yeah, me too. I agree with the premise, it's the practical issues of making it
happen that are in the way. It's not as trivial a change as it might seem.
Formal vs. layman terminology--or behavior for that matter--is a constant
tension in GnuCash. AFAIK none of the developers has formal accounting training
past one or two college courses; most rather less. Even fewer of the user base
have any formal accounting training at all and so we try to be very gentle
about using formal accounting jargon: For example one must override a default
preference to see Debit and Credit column headings instead of Deposit and
Withdrawal. I guess Fiscal Year vs. Accounting Period falls in the same bucket
except that nobody's ever added Fiscal Year to the formal accounting labels in
GnuCash.
Regards,
John Ralls
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