gnucash/libgnucash/doc/business.txt
Geert Janssens 83d14e1c1c Restructure the src directory
It is split into
- /libgnucash (for the non-gui bits)
- /gnucash (for the gui)
- /common (misc source files used by both)
- /bindings (currently only holds python bindings)

This is the first step in restructuring the code. It will need much
more fine tuning later on.
2017-08-10 18:45:00 +02:00

82 lines
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/** \page business1 Business Overview
API: \ref Business
\section businessoverview Business Objects
The GnuCash Business objects, in src/business/business-core, implement
certain basic small-business accounting functions. Below follows a summary
overview of the objects and the data that they store. These are listed in
order of complexity; with the basic building blocks first, and the more
complex structures last.
\subsection address Address:
A very simple object, stores strings for name/street-address/phone/fax/email
The address is not a separate entity, but is meant to be embedded in other
objects (that is, there is no addressbook; there is no address database that
is separate from the objects that use addresses; there is no 'foreach'
that can be used to iterate over all addresses.)
API: \ref Address
\subsection billterm BillTerm:
Describes billing terms, that is when a bill is due, and what sort of a
discount is applied (if any). The BillTerm object currently supports:
-- the discount applied to a bill (absolute numeric value),
-- the number of days until payment is due,
-- the number of days until a discount expires.
-- cutoff ??
The proximo type does what ???
API: \ref BillTerm
\subsection entry Entry:
\subsection invoice Invoice:
Pulls together info needed to geenrate an invoice, including addresses,
job, the dates, the billing terms, the amounts, and the accounts
to be credited.
API: \ref Entry
\section bus_design Business Design & Implementation Notes
Derek Atkins <warlord@mit.edu>
Version of October 2003
The gncTaxTable and gncBillTerm business objects have parent, child,
refcount, invisible field in thier structures that deserve some
explanation:
- a child is a 'frozen' instance of a parent. For example, the tax
percentage in a particular tax table may change over time, but you
dont want that change to affect already-posted invoices... So you
make sure there is an immutable 'copy' (read: child) of the tax
table when you post the invoice and repoint at the child.
- a parent can have many children, but it will only have a 'child'
pointer if the parent has not been modified. Think of this as a
copy-on-write mechanism. posted invoices will continue to use the
_same_ child until the parent is modified, at which point a new
child will be created.
- invisible means "dont show this in the list". It's so you dont
get all the children in the tax table list -- you only see parents.
I suppose this flag could also be called "is-child" as I believe that
only children can be invisible, and ALL children are invisible.
- refcount is a listing of how many objects are referencing it.
Basically, it's letting you know how many customer, vendor, entries,
etc are referencing e.g. a particular tax table object. mostly this
was done to make sure you cannot delete an in-use taxtable.
- children don't use refcounts, only parents do.
- A child always points to its parent (it can have only 1).
- A parent has a list of all children.
- A parent has a pointer to the current 'replica child', if one exists.
*/
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