Kael Shipman
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96 votes
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21 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Kael Shipman
commented
I don't have any votes left, but I'd like to give this a resounding PLUS ONE. Robin, I know this is waaaay old, but if you're still active in software development, I'd love to talk to you about this and other similar integration projects. Shoot me a line at kael.shipman@theoperationsinstitute.org.
Thanks,
Kael -
580 votes
An error occurred while saving the comment Kael Shipman
commented
I just wanted to add what I think is a very important note to this. In classic accounting, *what* you spend your money on has always been mixed with *why* you spent the money (for example, Expenses:Business:Dining and Expenses:Personal:Dining). Thus, I believe there are a few important steps to take:
First, we need to shift the terms that we use to refer to aspects of the financial system so that they more closely resemble reality, and in so doing, we'll reveal that there's missing data: *why* we spent the money. What is classically termed the Chart of Accounts is more complicated than just that. It's really a structure that stores information about *what* our transactions are: What is money in a bank account? It's a liquid asset. What's money in a mutual fund? It's a long-term investment. What is an expense? It's a good or service, which may be part of a hierarchy of goods and services. Importantly, an expense is NOT a reason, and that's the whole point.
This leads to the second to-do: We need to define a new structure, in this post referred to as "classifications", but perhaps more humanistically called "Funds" or "Budgets" that capture *why* we spent the money. Every split in a transaction should have one or more "Funds" or "Budgets" attached to it.
Thus, when you purchase a meal on a business trip, you register a split in "Expenses:Food:Eating Out" and then mark 80% of that split as coming from your Business fund and 20% (maybe you treated yourself to a glass of beer or two and you don't think your company should pay for that) as coming from your personal fund.
The last element of this is that reporting needs to be able to show *what* you spent your money on as a subset of *why* you spent the money. That is, you might view an expense report and see the visual equivalent of, "You spend an average of $300 per month on business expenses, of which an average of $32 are on Eating Out, $75 are on transport, $100 are on lodging [etc....]"
If anyone is interested in this, please check out theoperationsinstitute.org and get in touch with me. I'm looking to build on the extraordinary work that the GnuCash team and others are already doing by creating a suite of tools geared specifically toward nonprofits.
Thanks,
Kael -
5 votesKael Shipman
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179 votesKael Shipman
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280 votesKael Shipman
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I just wanted to add my agreement with David that this feature would potentially eliminate the need for other features like classification. I can think of a million uses for this, and have upvoted as much as possible :).