[ale] GnuCash (Was: Re: [OT] Home PBX?)

[mike at trausch.us]

On 08/01/2012 12:24 PM, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Unfortunately "doing the work" sometimes involves SOME amount of
> accounting knowledge.  Accounting is all about transfering value from
> one place to another.  These places are called "Accounts".  Every
> transaction moves value from one account to another.  Some accounts
> correspond to Bank accounts, but others are virtual in nature.  Still,
> the person doing the work needs to know where the money came from and
> where it went in order to enter it into the system.
> 
> I'm not sure where your boundary is between that and "holding accounting
> knowledge".

Here is an example.

I have a system that I use for tracking hours worked.  Every other
Monday, when I "run" payroll, I tally the worked hours, and I send an
email to the payroll processor with the employee ID, number of hours,
and any one-time adjustments.  They respond to me within about 24 hours,
with a listing of checks/direct deposit advices and stubs, and reports
for the current payroll.

I then take the reports for the current payroll, and I enter split
transactions into GC.  As an example, I'll use my last paycheck; I
worked 17.4 hours (at $20/hr) for the past two weeks.  (Well, more than
that, but that's what I recorded.  At this time, I don't pay myself for
admin overhead, just billable client hours.)  So, the gross pay was
$348, net pay was $308.78.

(Also note that the following process requires some... reworking.
Mostly in that I haven't structured the accounts properly for certain
types of things to show up on the appropriate reports in the appropriate
places, and I plan on fixing that in the next week or so.)

I then go to my "E:Wages and Compensation:Payroll:Michael B. Trausch"
account (I'll call this "E:WC:P:MBT" below), and in that account, I
enter a split:

Account				   Debit	  Credit
E:WC:P:MBT			  348.00
L:AP:Federal Payroll				   33.59
L:AP:GA Withholding				    5.63
A:Checking					  308.78

When the payroll company takes out the taxes from my checking later, I
create the entry to debit A/P and credit checking.

This situation can be abstracted, making it possible for a person to
simply enter the numbers from the payroll report, and the server has the
logic to turn those numbers into the appropriate accounting entries so
as to be able to accurately record the transaction.

The downside is that most situations have to be abstracted by
themselves: there isn't a generic way to hide all accounting things from
all situations at all times.  But I can go in and do things with the
accounting system that the server doesn't know how to do yet (right now,
that's everything!) and eventually, as I teach the software on our
server to handle these things correctly, I transfer responsibility from
myself to the software.  At that point, anyone in the business with the
authority to do so can take the report from the payroll company and fill
in the appropriate spaces in the application on our company's server, et
voilà!  Someone who doesn't know (or care) which accounts are involved,
or what a debit or a credit is, can get the payroll entered.

	--- Mike

-- 
A man who reasons deliberately, manages it better after studying Logic
than he could before, if he is sincere about it and has common sense.
                                   --- Carveth Read, “Logic”

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