I am also of the opinion that hiding or obfuscating terms and concepts
is not the solution.
Education is.
Yeah, I got an A in Accounting 101, big whoop, but I've understood it by
leaps and bounds decades later by using GnuCash with formal labels
turned on. (and using the Transaction Journal View) And I've learned
even more trying to explain it to others. (one learns a subject most by
trying to teach it)
Regards,
Adrien
On 10/20/23 8:35 PM, David Cousens wrote:
I do agree with the comments in your previous post that the concept of
transactions needs to be explained before or at least in parallel to concept of
accounts. I rewrote a fair bit of the basics section of the guide when I was
fresh out of an accounting master's which might account for its more technical
bias. I haven't revisited the guide much since then but I will take another
look at it. It is always a compromise between producing a full scale textbook
and brevity that someone will actually read.
Some other accounting software does indeed hide the details of the debit/credit
and the accounting equation and double entry from users. I am a convert from
software that did that and because that basis was hidden it made understanding
the accounts more difficult than it should, particularly during the setup phase
of a business. Add to that my highly paid accountant (one of big 4) was not
particularly useful. That can be useful for a lot of routine data entry, however
it is the edge cases that often require a deeper understanding of the basis of
double entry accounting.
I disagree however that the non-accounting terminology should be the default.
The non-accounting terminology is often not precise in its meaning whereas once
you have understood the definitions, the meaning of the accounting terminology
and its use is well defined. Accounting is a well documented commercial
practice and the double entry system is core to its operation and GnuCash is
primarily accounting software, not general financial software although it does a
very good job for small operations and can be adapted to that use.
It is also an excellent educational tool for formal accounting. I used it as
such while doing amaster's and it produced basic reports which conformed well
with what was expected for formal accounting reports.
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