X-Accountant Project Goals
X-Accountant is a Motif/C (and soon C++?) personal accounting
application.  To read more about X-Accountant, see the
Xacc home page at
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~rclark/xacc.
This page introduces the Xacc Project, aimed at enhanceing and
improving X-Accountant.
We believe 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 their 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-sleeves-and-do-it
coder cannot know where to begin.  Detailed goals lend a concreteness 
to the discussion: they can be architect-ed, 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.
Meta-Architecture Goals
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.
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 sources & 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.
Create both a personal-financial 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 their 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.
Concrete Architectural and Development Goals
The following is a list of the larger, more abstract, and more difficult 
architectural goals.  
- Ledger Widget
- 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 abilities, 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.
    
    Current Status: the latest alpha-development releases (version 
    1.1.x) contain such an object.  Its currently motif-based, but 
    should be easily portable to Qt, GTK.
     
 
- C++
- The current code is written in C, in an object-oriented fashion.
    However, C++ has many benefits;  a major overhaul and conversion
    to C++ is needed.  This is a large task, with little short-term 
    benefit to the project; however, it is vital for getting to the 
    next level of clean, well-structured code, and thus should be
    considered a priority.
    
 
- Extension Language Support
- 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 recompilations or
    re-linking.
    
    Rather than designing a loadable-module API, a better design 
    goal would probably be to create interfaces to extension 
    languages (perl, tcl, guile).  Such an interface, laying in
    between the transaction data, and the GUI that manipulates
    it, should allow for the easy creation of modules, and for
    modifying the behaviour of the application.  Using
    
    SWIG should simplify the actual implementation.
     
 
- SQL I/O
- A module is necessary to allow data to be fetched from an SQL
    database, and for that database 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 changes made by others,
    the edit could be rejected en-masse, allowing the user to merge and
    correct their changes.  This is a very important note: updating
    SQL does NOT require locks to be held for long periods of time!
    
     
 
- Financial Objects
- The current system makes a distinction between the data (account,
    transaction) and they GUI that displays it.  This distinction should
    be further strengthened, and a set of financial objects, residing in
    their own library, should be created.  Current Status: 
    ready to split this stuff off into its own library.  The basic engine 
    has been detangled from the GUI elements.
Incremental Development Goals
The following is a list of goals and "bug fixes" that should be solved
immediately, independent of the major goals.
- Categories
- 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 their 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.
    
 
- Internationalization
- 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 English-language
    messages have been #defined and moved to a single header file.
    Still looking for an infrastructure for choosing a message
    catalogue.  Looking for routines that can parse and print
    monetary values in different formats, as well as date/time
    parsing/printing routines.  (xacc contains such parsing
    routines, but they're not very powerful or i18n'ed.)
    
 
- Navigation
- 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 should be.
    
 
- Icons, Icons, Icons
- 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.
    
 
- Folder Tabs
- Currently, Income/Expense accounts can be shown or hidden by
    selecting from a menu.  It would be nice to be able to examine
    different account types (Asset, Liability, Income, Expense,
    Payables, Receivables, Inventory) by selecting a tab folder.
    
 
- Fly-Over Help
- When the user pauses the mouse over a button, "fly-over" pop-up
    help windows should appear. 
    
 
- Simplified Stock Ledger
- Stocks and Mutual funds are handled by placing them each in their
    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 to understand and use.  A simplified but still
    powerful ledger window is desperately needed.
    
 
- Forced Double-Entry
- 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 desirable, 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.
    
 
- Transaction Window Fixes
- 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 purchase.   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.
    
 
- User Preferences
- Create menu system & file format for manipulating user
    preferences.  Preferences include things like showing/not
    showing categories, forcing double-entry, etc.
    
 
- Bonds & Interest Bearing Instruments
- 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 regularly recurring transactions.
    
 
- Household Assets
- Add an example showing how regular household assets (house, car,
    jewelry, etc.) should be treated.  In particular, show how
    appreciation and depreciation should be treated.
    
 
- Add Graphs
- Add the whole rainbow of graphs, charts, etc.
    
 
- Add Reports
- Add the whole host of reports, including Net Worth statements,
    Balance Sheets, and Profit & Loss statements.  These should be
    printable: it might be best to create them as ordinary HTML pages,
    and use the printing abilities of the browser.  In an ideal
    situation, the user should be able to create custom reports.
    
 
- Inventory, Job Costing
- Add the business features needed to maintain a stock of items for
    sale, estimating jobs.
    
 
- Payables & Receivables
- Add features to track sales receipts and other pending sources
    of income, as well as owed sums.
    
 
- Check Printing
- Create a check-printing ability.
    
 
- Grayed-out Form Help
- Create grayed out entries in the ledger, titled "Memo",
    "Description", etc, helping users understand what should be typed into
    each field.
    
 
- Accounting Periods
- Ability to permanently lock records as non-editable.  This should
    be straight-forward by using the "reconciled" field to hold
    "locked", and not alllowing the gui to edit locked records.
    
 
- Quicken(TM) Export
- Ability to export Quicken QIF files.
    
 
- Tab-delimited ASCII file format
- People *like* to be able to read file contents in ASCII. There are
    many unix tools for manipulating ASCII.  An ASCII equivalent of the
    current file format should be easy to develop ... just substitute
    the writes with printf's.
    
 
- Splits
- When performing a transfer, it is well-useful to allow the transfer
    to be "split" between several accounts.  To implement a split,
    the best direction might be to have each transaction be a pointer
    to a set of splits, with each split having it's own distinct
    credited account, memo field and currency value.  Suggestion is to
    leave the debited account pointer in the main transaction, and have one
    credited account pointer in each of the splits.  Also, sugget
    leaving a "cleared" flag in the main transaction, *and* putting a
    separate cleared flag in each split as well.  This allows the
    cleared flag to be independently set for both the debited & credited
    accounts.
    
    N.B. Some initial groundwork for splits has been done, but the
    hard part is still ahead.
     
 
- Locks
- When splits are implemented, and the parent transaction has been
    marked as cleared, the record should be locked, so that further
    modifications to the amount can't be performed (or at least, a warning
    is generated.  This prevents accidental garbaging up of old
    transactions.)
Completed
Well, just to show that we are getting things done.
- New Improved Web Site
- A spiffy web site for all of this is needed, with good graphics and
    exciting text!! A mailing list, mailing list archives, and a live
    CVS tree are all bonuses.
    
 
Misc
Your name here as project contributor!
- Linas Vepstas  is maintaining the current xacc
    and is attempting to coordinate the project work.
- Robin Clark  is creating a register widget in QT/KDE
- Henning Spruth hopes to work in internationalization & locale issues,
    including a translation to German.
- Peter Norton  is working on a GTK port of Xbae
- Daniel R Risacher  is working on a
    GTK ledger/register/spread-sheet infrastructure.
Draft version 0.15 February 1998
Linas Vepstas linas@linas.org
Robin Clark rclark@hmc.edu