1. Mailing Lists
  2. Accounting
  3. Re: Feedback Accounting Blog

Accounting mailing list archives

accounting@odoo-community.org

Browse archives

Re: Merging PSCs in Accounting PSC

Re: Merging PSCs in Accounting PSC

Avatar

Re: Feedback Accounting Blog

by
WilldooIT, Jonathan Wilson
- 14/11/2015 02:17:08
Hi Fabien

Firstly I think the new finances is a big leap forward and I really like many aspects of the new design (especially the bank sync's) , however, fiscal year and reporting is still an issue for me and never fails to make me feel uncomfortable when doing a demonstration to a CFO:

Firstly there needs to be two dates on the account moves: financial date (the current "date" field) and entry date. It is quite common for example to receive a supplier invoice in say December for goods or services delivered in November and accounts like to put the account move into the period in which it happened but also record the date entered. So the entry date should be added to invoices and GL journals.

I like the new mechanism for reporting, however there needs to be way more GL report filter options and the ability to pre-define them and have them available on the individual reports menu, I think this would in large part also resolve the fiscal periods and years issue. Additionally, the need of more than one comparison column is required (think of a financial year report by quarter report it obviously needs 4 columns at least). From my experience you at least need pre-defined selection like this:
  • This month (TM), this month last year (already there)
  • Rolling quarters + Last year same rolling quarters
    • last rolling quarter ie ((TM) + (TM-1) + (TM-2)) and same for previous year
    • last+1 (TM-3) + (TM-4) + (TM-5) + same for the previous year
    • last+2 (TM-6) + (TM-7) + (TM-8) + same for the previous year
    • last+3 (TM-9) + (TM-10) + (TM-11) + same for the previous year
  • Financial quarters - as above except for the financial quarters (eg in Australia the financial year starts on July 1st, so the first financial quarter is July-Aug-Sept)
  • Financial year-to-date (YTD) + last year YTD
  • Calendar year-to-date (YTD) + last year YTD
  • ......
Whilst you might have the facility to define a custom period it is inconvenient to have to continually do this (although the last selection appears to be 'sticky'). What would be much better is to let the user define their own custom filters and have them always available form the menu. I don't think this would break the new reporting model at all.

As you can see above the list is extensive and larger companies may even want to create their own. So what I would love to see is the ability to define you own periods and have them appear on the reports filter list. Additionally the reporting periods definition should be to some extent formula driven e.g. using predefined variables like "TM"=this_month, "TRQ"=this_rolling_quarter, "LRQ"=last_rolling_quarter, etc......, as these are impractical to define using fixed date ranges.

Financial reporting is infinitely variable and so it is essential that raw data be available for export to excel which is handled by the current system OK. 

BS and P&L account Hierarchy
I know this is there via the financial reporting, but in no way could it be call "super-simple" or  "user-friendly". Maybe it just need just needs a front end to make it understandable by the average non-tech accountant but using the same mechanism underneath?

In lieu of the above features we will use the wonderful module by ASCONE "mis_builder" - this is truly a work of art for the accountant type tech heads. In fact we will use it anyway as it offers so many great ways to report not only financial data but data from other models also. But there definitely needs to be good financial reporting options "out-of-the-box". 


Jon

Jonathan Wilson
ph: +61 3 8506 0393
mob: +61 4 000 17 444
2013 & 2015 Odoo Best Partner Asia/Pacific
Creators of  Odoo-Pentaho integration project





On 13 November 2015 at 21:23, Fabien Pinckaers <fp@odoo.com> wrote:
Feedback on this blog: https://odoo-community.org/blog/oca-news-1/post/odoo-9-accounting-oca-28

1/ Removal of fiscal year

Removal of fiscal years has a lot of advantages: no more painful opening of fiscal years (I would say that 30% of our customers call us in the beginning of a fiscal year because they could not invoice), easier comparison mechanism, performance improvement, better lock-in system, efficient multi-company settings. 

There is only one little drawback (*) in the current implementation: the user has to select date ranges when doing a report for complex fiscal year (>12 months). It's a rare use case and it takes just 30 seconds to set custom dates on a report.

Trying to put back fiscal year would be a HUGE mistake. It may complexify the code and the user experience.

If you want to solve the drawback, the small improvement I would suggest it to just save the current report date selection so that if you launch the report again, it uses the same selection.

(*) or is there other drawbacks?

2/ Limited access to journal items

We will not add this as we think it's too technical for the majority of the users who should use Journal Entries which is cleaner as you can work in it, and they reflect a real accounting document. Journal items view can only be readonly, which makes them useful.

But we understand that some "advanced" users may want to have it. 

Note that we have added (not sure it's merged yet, but it will be soon) the link from the general ledger report to open journal items related to the account. (currently the link is showed if there are more than 80 records, but we will make it appears even on low number of entries)

3/ Removal of hierarchy

That's just a technical point of view. If you have a look at the accountant needs: they need hierarchy in P&L, Balance Sheet, Chart of Accounts...

All reports in Odoo have a hierarchy (P&L, BS, Chart of Accounts), but this way of managing the hierarchy is cleaner than a simple parent_id approach. In v8, we only had a hierarchy for Chart of Accounts --> how do you manage the hierarchy of P&L, ...? In v9, every report can have its own hierarchy.

4/ Basic reports

Yes, some reports can be improved.

5/ What's the use case?

Since v9, you don't need to use the reconciliation mechanism anymore (réconciliation comptable). The system is designed around the bank reconciliation. (rapprochement banquaire). Or, only for very specific use case. 99% of the reconciliation will be on the bank statement or the invoice directly, and this is a good thing, just a different way to work. (BTW the reconciliation wizard is still there)

For visualization, I do agree we should add some information on the journal entry to zoom to reconciled documents (invoices, other payments, ...)

6/ Payments

What is the nightmare with payments in currencies?

But I do agree that we should add a multi-suppliers payment feature. (If I am not wrong, technically, the feature is there but not activated as I have seen it working before the release; but it does not seems to work anymore)



Thanks for the feedback and effort to improve Odoo,

-- 
Fabien

_______________________________________________
Mailing-List: http://odoo-community.org/groups/accounting-28
Post to: mailto:accounting@odoo-community.org
Unsubscribe: http://odoo-community.org/groups?unsubscribe


Reference