GnuCash Notes

I'm so glad to have found some decent documentation on an accounting program! It validates some of what I've designed, and makes me question some other ideas.

Some questions to clarify and possibly send the GnuBooks team at some point:

• Lots. What are they? Only relevant to inventory?
• Accounting periods - I like this, but what is the data model for a "book" in the accounting period / closing the books context? Usually when an accounting period is over, certain accounts (revenue and expenses) are cleared out to zero, with matching entries in assets, liabilities, and equity.
• Splits, transactions, entries, and lots. Any way to explain how these data structures are related? In my mind, a transaction is a single-sided change in an account ledger posted from a double-sided journal entry (which always sums out to zero). I recall reading somewhere in some GnuCash docs that transactions summed out to zero. Need to clarify that.

I think I may have gotten my terms mixed up. I probably need to switch the terms entry and transaction, where each transaction has two entries. Verify this!

In their financial constraints docs, they mention the core constraints, some of which are hard-coded into the object model of the program. Good! We don't want to re-invent accounting methodology here, just implement it in software.