Dr Kirby, I do not understand what you are saying (about what gnucash
does or not do) nor why you think the developers need to :do
something"in order to produce a Balance Sheet report.
I strongly suspect that that your "problem" has more to do with how you
choose to set up your CoA (your accounts hierarchy)
On 12/10/2021 7:41 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
Whenever I pick up a book on accounting, it normally shows something like
this.
1) Adds up all the fixed assets, and gives a total for fixed assets.
2) Adds up all the current assets, and gives a total for current assets
3) Adds the fixed and current assets to get a total of *all *assets
That all seems very logical to me.
*But a balance sheet submitted to Companies House does not show the total
assets.
Looking down the balance sheet for my company I see the following in order
1) Tangible Fixed Assets
2) Current Assets
3) Creditors amounts falling due within one year.
IF you want/are required to have these here (short term liabilities) and
only long term liabilities under "liabilities" then make it so. You CAN
have "contra accounts" when using gnucash. In other words, you can have
an account with a name like "short term liabilities" under ASSETS. It
would have a credit balance instead of the normal debit balance of an
ordinary asset account.
4) Net current liabilities (that's equal to #2 - #3)
5) Total assets less current liabilities (that's #1 + #2 - #3)
6) Provision for liabilities - I can't work out how that's calculated, but
I see it is of uncertain timing and amounts. I guess I should ask my
accountant how he came up with the figure. (*With the usual disclaimers,
does anyone know whether that would be sensibly listed in GnuCash as a
liability, despite its only an estimate?*)
Not a gnucash matter. But yes, it is often necessary to place a
"book value" on assets (or in this case a liability) for which the
actual amount is not known.
7) Net assets (I can't work out how that's arrived at)
8) Shareholders - same as net assets.
Where is the line item for long term liabilities? By #8
"shareholders" I assume this is a corporation (with shares) and this is
ofo course "equity" . I can see the possibility of "long term assets"
(but not fixed assets). For example, THIS corporation might own a stake
in another. It is of course possible that the "balance sheet" you are
showing us is just having lines as applicable to your specific case and
not what other corporations reporting in your jurisdiction would have.
In other words, you are showing us arbitrary line numbers and NOT "line
items" of the report to the government. In other words, maybe what you
are showing us is missing both "long term assets" and "long term
liabilities" simply because your corporation doesn't have either of those.
I think I will write myself a computer program, that tries every
combination of figures to arrive at others. I think if I add every
combination, I will get there eventually. I have a computer with two
26-core CPUs and 384 GB RAM, so I should just about have enough computer
power. 😂
Any computer has enough "power" if you give it enough time and storage
(Turing published his proof in the late 30's)
But I want to point something out. You want to have your CoA structured
so that the DATA you will need to fill in the required reports is
available. Not necessarily the report in finished form. That could be a
waste of time. Mind, I am going by the reports I have to submit. I face
the additional problem that some of these MUST be filed "whole dollar"
and MUST agree with the previous year's filing. The issue there, of
course, is that (rounded A + rounder B) does not necessarily equal
rounded (A + B) so a certain amount of "fudging" might have to be
applied to make everything work out. And choosing how and where to fudge
so as to minimize the overall distortion is not a task I'd care to try
to program << and this WAS how I used to make my living >>
Michael D Novack
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