Would like to revive this old thread since the request made by the OP is still valid for us Swedish users (and maybe German users according to one post in the thread?). I wonder if there has been some development along making transactions "persistent" or read-only/locked/un-changeable?
In short the request was made since the Swedish accounting legislation requires transactions to be persistent, i.e. when entered into the ledger it shall not be possible to change it afterward (or rather, entering of the transaction is considered completed when it has been made persistent). To shortcut a long discussion about how silly this requirement is, because you can always change your transactions somehow by editing databases etc., we can postulate that it would be enough to fulfill this requirement if the transactions somehow was made read-only in an irreversible manner from the user interface. I.e. once a transaction is made read-only, it should not be possible to change it from the UI. ( I also understand that a differently compiled version of gnucash could import the data files and change the read-only transactions, but that would be ok also since the intention is not to fully secure a system against such changes, which is more or less impossible, but make it difficult for the ordinary user to change transactions afterwards). Here is the last post in the old thread from 2016: --- On 2 February 2016 at 15:39, John Ralls <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user> wrote: > >> On Feb 2, 2016, at 8:17 AM, Colin Law <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user> wrote: >> >> On 18 January 2016 at 08:18, Draug <https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user> wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>> For quite a while I've used GnuCash for the accounting of my company, but >>> recently I've come to question if it's legal to use GnuCash for that >>> purpose. According to Swedish accounting legislation, you are not allowed to >>> use accounting software that allows you to edit registered transactions >>> (where they use Excel as an example), which to my knowledge is quite easy to >>> do in GnuCash, even after reconcilation. Swedish accounting legislation >>> requires that every mistake is corrected with another transaction, and that >>> the mistake is left intact in the records. >>> >>> Is there anything that I've missed that makes it possible to use GnuCash in >>> accordance with Swedish law? I really want to avoid switching to some >>> proprietary, cloud-based accounting software that costs $12 a month to use. >> >> An email from Geert in a different thread has reminded me that there >> is already code that optionally makes reconciled transactions read >> only. I wonder then whether it would in fact be a fairly simple change >> to the code to make it so that /all/ transactions would be locked, >> dependent on a configuration option that could be set but not cleared. >> > > Yes, the locking code is already in place-or more likely, in several places-so it would just take a creation option in the New File Assistant to make a book immediately lock transactions. Like the root account currency, it would be unchangeable once the book is created. > > I don't think we'd want it to be a config option because that would require either that users who want the feature build it themselves or that distros and we provide multiple packages. Building is beyond the ability of most of our target audience, particularly on Macs and Windows, and aside from the distros probably not wanting to cooperate there's a good chance that many users would accidentally get the build they didn't want. Sloppy use of words on my part, I meant a setting rather than a build option, but a creation option would be even better. Colin --- Regards //Bengt _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
