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<html>
<head>
<title>X-Accountant Project Goals</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>X-Accountant Project Goals</h1>
We beleive that a GNU GPL project should provide goals and motivations
at both the large and the small scales, in order to focus and motivate
the developers. Over-arching and grand goals are difficult to grasp
and carry out; yet thier lack serves only to dissuade the grand
thinkers. A list of detailed goals may be mind-numbing to the casual
reader; yet, without them, the roll-up-your-sleves-and-do-it
coder cannot know where to begin. Detailed goals lend a concreteness
to the discussion: they can be architected, designed and coded at any time
by coders of any ability. Thus, we present a list of goals, large and
small, with the hope that the small goals will fall quickly, and the
large ones shall turn into a multitude of small ones.
<h2>Meta-Architecture Goals</h2>
Create a clean separation between the data structures and the
GUI that manipulates them, along the lines of a "Model-View-Controller"
paradigm. Lists of accounts and the transactions in
them can be thought of as a representation of financial data,
a "Model". The GUI that adds, modifies and deletes these should
be thought of as a manipulator of the data, a "Controller".
The current Motif GUI is just
one possible manipulator of the data; other GUI's,
some simple, some complex, some possibly based on other graphical
toolkits (QT, Fresco) should be possible. The "View" of the data
is the modern way of saying a "report". A report generator
can create balance sheets and profit&loss statements, it can create pie
charts of asset allocations, or graphs asset value over time.
<p>
Create a mechanism for obtaining data from multiple financial sources.
Currently, X-Accountant stores data in its own file format; it can also
import Quicken(TM) QIF files. However, other soruces & sinks of data
might be stock-quote web sites, on-line banking interfaces, or
access to SQL databases. It should be possible to have any of these at
as data sources, and with the appropriate security mechanisms, it should
also be possible to update these.
<p>
Create both a persoanl-finacial accounting system, as well as a
business accounting framework. Although these two goals may seem at
odds with each other, there is no reason why they could not share
a considerable amount of framework. The goals of a personal finance
system is a system that is easy to use, has a simple yet powerful menu
system, provides graphs, charts, and interfaces to on-line banking and
stock systems. The goals of a business system is multi-user
capabilities built on an SQL database and/or CORBA objects for
multi-user use, with support for inventory control, shipping &
receiving, billing, accounts payable & receivable. A pie-in-the-sky
system might even include interfaces to on-line shopping carts,
credit-card clearing interfaces, or even a subset of SAP R/3 (TM)
functions. Note that all of these systems require at thier base
both a strong model of a "financial transaction", as well as
a ledger window, and a report generation mechanism. The tools
created to allow one should be portable enough to be deployed in the
other application as well.
<p>
<h2>Concrete Architectural and Development Goals</h2>
The following is a list of the larger, more abstract, and more difficult
architectural goals.
<dl>
<dt><b>Ledger Widget</b>
<dd>Create a more powerful ledger widget. Currently, the X-Accountant
uses the powerful XbaeMatrix widget to display the ledger windows.
This is a good widget for displaying and maintaining tables.
However, it could, and should, be further customized to handle
the needs of accounting use. Thus, it should be possible to
designate cells as being date cells, and provide completely
automated handling of date entry within these cells. Similarly,
it should be possible to designate monetary cells which can handle
input. General text fields, for the description and the memo,
should be endowed with quick-fill abilites, allowing completion
by comparing the current types text to previous entries. Finally,
there should be pull-down (combo-box) cells that can contain
pull-down item lists. Each of these functions are currently
implemented in X-Accountant; however, there is no separation between
these features and the specific accounting functions. A clean
separation would make the design and implementation of new ledger
windows much simpler and easier.
<p>
<dt><b>C++</b>
<dd>The current code is written in C, in an object-oriented fashion.
However, C++ has many benefits; a major overhaul and conversion
to C++ would benefit the project. However, this is a large task,
with few obvious rewards, and little short-term benefit to the
project.
<p>
<dt><b>Loadable Modules</b>
<dd>Data is currently available by reading the xacc file format, and
by importing QIF files. This interface should be abstracted,
allowing data to come from any source. The abstraction should
involve dynamically loadable modules, so that new modules could
be developed and added without the need for recompilation or
re-linking.
<p>
<dt><b>SQL I/O</b>
<dd>A module is necessary to allow data to be fetched from an SQL
database, and for that databse to be updated. Some thoughts:
SQL databases do not need to be locked during editing: instead,
an optimistic approach, similar to that employed by CVS (concurrent
version system, a mechanism for storing versions of source code)
could be used: if the edits conflict with chnages made by others,
the edit could be rejected en-masse, allowing the user to merge and
correct thier changes. This is a very important note: updating
SQL does NOT require locks to be held for long periods of time!
<p>
<dt><b>Financial Objects</b>
<dd>The current system makes a distinction between te data (account,
transaction) and they GUI that displays it. This distinction should
be further strengthened, and aset of financial objects, residing in
thier own library, should be created.
</dl>
<p>
</dl>
<h2>Incremental Development Goals</h2>
The following is a list of goals and "bug fixes" that should be solved
immediately, independent of the major goals.
<dl>
<dt><b>Categories</b>
<dd>Provide a default list of "Categories" (Income/Expense Accounts).
These are categories such as "Automobile Expense", "Bank Interest
Income", and "Employment Income". The user should be able to
select a default set of accounts, and have those be created.
To actually implement this, it might be best to simple create
a file with these in them, and load that file. A mechanism should
be provided to allow the user to weed-out the unwanted accounts
without hampering thier ability to use them at a later date, if
desired. Current status: there exists the ability to merge
accounts from multiple files, and the ability to hide/show
Income/Expense Account types.
<p>
<dt><b>Internationalization</b>
<dd>All menus, markup and help-text should be internationalized,
so that X-Accountant could be usable in any country. This
would include the printing of currency values in the local
country conventions. Current status: most messages have been
moved to a single header file.
<p>
<dt><b>Navigation</b>
<dd>Menu navigation using the keyboard should be possible.
Although menu mnomenics exist, they seem to be broken.
Similarly, tab-key navigation should be possible. Currently,
it is possible to use the tab key to navigate from field to
field in the register window, to user arrow keys to navigate menus,
and quick-fill to automatically complete fields. However,
it is not possible to tab over to the "Commit" button. It shoudl be.
<p>
<dt><b>Icons, Icons Icons</b>
<dd>A set of pretty icons and button pixmaps should be created for
minimized windows, and for the various buttons. A user-configurable
button-bar would be nice too. This should probably be coupled with
the creation of an X resource file, which does not currenyl exist.
<p>
<dt><b>Folder Tabs</b>
<dd>Currently, Income/Expense accounts can be shown or hidden by
selecting from a menu. It would be nice to be able to examine
diffferent account types (Asset, Liability, Income, Expense,
Payables, Receivables, Inventory) by selecting a tab folder.
<dt><b>Fly-Over Help</b>
<dd>When the user pauses the mouse over a button, "fly-over" pop-up
help windows shold appear.
<p>
<dt><b>Simplified Stock Ledger</b>
<dd>Stocks and Mutual funds are handled by placing them each in thier
own account. Each account can be viewed individually. If all of
the stock accounts are children of a master trading account, then
the trading account can be viewed and modified in a General Ledger
window. The current stock general ledger window is a bit obtuse,
and difficult ot understand and use. A simplified but still
powerful ledger window is desperately needed.
<p>
<dt><b>Forced Double-Entry</b>
<dd>The system supports double-entry: every transaction
indicates a pair of accounts: one is debited, and one is credited.
Double-entry is a powerful way of ensuring the integrity of
of the financial data. Currently, while double-entry is supported,
its use is not forced: the user can create dangling transactions,
where only one account is indicated. Although this is acceptable
for home use (even diesriable, since it allows the casual user
the simplicity they desire), it is not acceptable for business use.
It must be possible to enable forced-double entry, so that a
transaction cannot be completed until two accounts have been specified.
It should also be possible to sweep through the date, and find all
dangling transactions.
<p>
<dt><b>Transaction Window Fixes</b>
<dd>The transaction window should allow the user to specify a share
price (when purchasing/selling shares) as well as the load
and/or fees associated with the pruchase. Fees, of course,
are handled as separate transactions: however, it should
still be possible to specify the fees, the transfer, and other
details from a single window.
<p>
<dt><b>Bonds & Interest Bearing Instruments</b>
<dd>Support should be added for Mortgages, Bonds, CD's and other
instruments (e.g. savings accounts) that pay interest on a regular
basis. It should be possible to specify the interest rate,
the payment schedule, and other regularrly recurring transacitons.
<p>
<dt><b>Household Assets</b>
<dd>Add an example showing how regular ousehold assets (house, car,
jewelry, etc.) should be treated. In particular, show how
appreciation and depreciation should be treated.
<p>
<dt><b>Add Graphs</b>
<dd>Add the whole rainbow of graphs, charts, etc.
<p>
<dt><b>Add Reports</b>
<dd>Add the whole host of reports, including NetWorth statements,
Balance Sheets, and Profit & Loss statements. These should be
prinatable: it might be best to create them as ordinary HTML pages,
and use the printing abilites of the browser. In an ideal
situatuation, the user should be able to create custom reports.
<p>
<dt><b>Inventory, Job Costing</b>
<dd>Add the business features needed to maintain a stock of items for
sale, estimating jobs.
<p>
<dt><b>Payables & Receivables</b>
<dd>Add feautures to track sales receipts and other pending sources
of income, as well as owed sums.
<p>
<dt><b>Check Printing</b>
<dd>Create a check-printing ability.
<p>
<dt><b>Greyed-out Form Help</b>
<dd>Create greyed out entries in the ledger, titled "Memo",
"Description", etc, helping users understand what should be typed into
each field.
</dl>
</p>
<hr>
Draft version 0.1 December 1997<br>
Linas Vepstas linas@linas.org <br>
Robin Clark rclark@hmc.edu<br>
</body>
</html>