Re: [orca-list] Using Gnucash with Orca

[Ishe Chinyoka <ishechinyoka yahoo com>]

Hi all,

After various trials and errors during the weekend, I have to 
thank all
of you who suggested the use of Homebank as it comes out of the 
box
already accessible. However, what I discovered with Gnucash is 
that it
is now accessible in 4.8. As a result, I have settled on it being 
my
default personal finance program.

For the benefit of anyone who might want to try it out, I am ready 
to
help. Of course, currently I spend most of my time in the accounts
register, the Loan Calculator tool and Schedule window. So other
advanced tools like reporting and reconciliation, I have not yet 
tried them out.

Below is a bit of a long tutorial on using Gnucash personal 
finance
management tool based on my experience. So bear with me.

This is what I ended up doing getting around inaccessible
controls.

1. Accounts setup is accessible from the menus. When starting a 
new
file, the New Accounts Hierarchy dialog box pops up which guides 
you
through the process of creating a new Chart of Accounts. You can 
pick
the appropriate CoA based on whether you are a business or just a
household. Since it is just a wizard, I found this without issues.
2. The spot that used to torment me was the Accounts Register: its
fields are not labelled, but with the help of a pair of eyes from 
a
friend, I figured out the following:
(a) In basic ledger (with one split), we have these fields for 
each
split: [1] Date; [2] account number; [3] description; [4] Transfer
account (the other account to be affected by this transaction); 
[5] the
debit field (the left side of the ledger entry, increases the 
assets and
expense accounts, while increasing the liability, Equity and 
Income
accounts. The extended accounts equation here helps:
------ begin equation ---
Assets - Expenses = Equity + Liability + Income
------ End equation ------
Anything to the left of the equal sign is a
debit account which gets increased by this field. Sorry for a 
lengthy
footnote :). ); and [6] the Credit field (or the righthand side of 
a
ledger entry. See note above about its importance: credit field
increases Equity, Liabilities and Income accounts, as dictated by 
the
extended Account equation.)

(B) In Split mode, (we can split a ledger by going to 
View->Autosplit
Ledger while we are in Account Register), the order of the fields
differ. The idea here is that you can affect more than two 
accounts with
one transaction. For example, getting a salary of say 1000 (in 
whichever
currency) may affect the Tax account, your savings Account and 
your
Pension account. So in split window, what I normally do is to 
first go
to View->Autosplit ledger and then press the Enter key to start 
entering
transactions. This way, the fields are as follows:
[1] Action window: do you want to increase, decrease or direct 
debit the
affected account? you pick from the list. I just type the first 
letter
of the action, and using the up or down arrow key, pick the 
preferred
action; [2] Memo for the split: this is just a helpful tip for 
yourself
as for the purpose of the transaction; [3] Transfer Account: just 
type
the first letter of the account to be affected. In the example of 
a
salary given above, I Pick Income:Salary and press enter; [4] The 
next
field is a debit field. But as this is an income account, I have 
to
credit it to increase it. [5] The credit field is the last one for 
this
split, so I enter 1000 as added to the Income:Salary account. Now 
here
comes the interesting part: Pressing the Tab key here will simply 
add a
new split (think of how a tab in a table adds a new row): a split 
is just a ledger window for another account affected
by this transaction. So pressing the tab key will repeat the steps
above, but instead here under action I pick Increase, Under memo I 
state
that this increases my savings account, Under Transfer Account, I 
pick
Assets:Savings for my bank account. Now I tab into the Debit 
field. By
default Gnucash will already have deposited 1000 for you, as the 
credit
for the income already has this figure. So I edit it and remove 
1000
and instead just type 800, the other 200 is to be gobbled by other 
two
accounts. Under credit field I leave it empty. I press the tab key
again for a new split, pick Increase, under transfer account I 
pick Expense:Tax, then
under the debit field I enter 90, (by default you will find 200 in
there). Its credit field is left empty and tab again for a new 
split:
Action Increase; memo type what you want; Transfer Account, pick
Expense:Pension. Already its Debit field will have the remainder 
of all
the deductions from the original 1000: so it has 110.
After all the splits are entered, press Enter. your transaction 
will be
recorded.


3. Another problematic spot I used to have besides the Account 
Register
was expanding and collapsing Accounts trees, especially those that
weren't placeholders. An account in Gnucash can have other 
accounts
known as subaccounts. This account might be a placeholder, meaning 
that
you cannot post new entries to it. A placeholder account simply 
contains
other accounts. However, there are some accounts that aren't 
placeholder
accounts that contain other accounts: you can post transactions to 
them,
while at the same time you can create new subaccounts underneath 
them.

Anyway, to expand an account tree which is a placeholder account, 
you
can simply press the Spacebar while the focus is on the Name 
field.

However, the consistent way to  expand an account tree
whether it is a placeholder or not, is to press Shift+Right arrow. 
To
collapse it, just press Shift+left arrow keys. After you do this, 
you
will see a level of other accounts here.

4. To Edit an account, or to open its Account Register, just press 
the
enter key while the account is being announced. To have this 
window
properly announced by Orca, I had to go to Edit->Preferences and 
under
Account Register, I ticked "Open in new window". This way you can 
even
review any transactions you made in the past by using Up arrow or 
down
arrow to move between transactions. Transactions are like rows in 
a
table: you move in a transaction using the Tab key or Shift+Tab to 
go
back. Home and end move to the beginning or end of a field,
respectively. Shift+page Up moves to the First transaction, whilst
Shift+Page Down moves to the last transaction in the register.

So folks, sorry for the long message, but I hope it might be of 
help to
someone looking forward to using Gnucash: my overall assessment is 
that
this is a good and accessible application albeit one that still 
needs a
little tinkering. In my opinion, some work may still need to be 
done on
making the field labels accessible: Orca should read these labels. 
In
the meantime, besides what I said above, I discovered that if you 
read
the status bar with Orca, Gnucash will be showing the purpose of a
highlighted field. So you can just read the statusbar with Orca
Key+Keypad Enter twice quickly. I am using Gnucash 4.8, so this 
may not
be the experience you get if you use another version. I hope to 
add this
tutorial to my blog by Friday after editing it a bit.

Hope this helps someone out there,

Warm regards,


Ishe



On Fri, Nov 26, 2021 at 08:13  Ishe Chinyoka via orca-list 
<orca-list gnome org> wrote:
> HI friends,
>
> Recently I started using Gnucash for my personal finance 
> management, and
> I like what I am seeing when it comes to its interface. The only 
> problem
> I am getting is that Orca does not read labels when I am in the 
> account
> register. So the workaround I adopted was to ask a sighted 
> friend 
> to
> read those labels and wrote them down in a separate text file. 
> this
> works for now.
>
> The big problem I am having is that other windows like 
> reconciliation,
> reports and cash flow is inaccessible. So is there anyone who 
> uses
> Gnucash with Orca? If so, are there some tips you can share on 
> how 
> we
> can use it as blind people? At the moment, I discovered that if 
> I 
> go to
> Preferences and set the Account Register to open in a new 
> window, 
> I can
> review my transactions with screen-reader. BETWEEN, is there any 
> plan to
> have Orca work with Gnucash, seeing that it is a Gnome 
> application? And
> which other personal finance application are people using on 
> this 
> list
> other than Gnucash?
>
> Thanks in advance.


--
Ishe

   “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole 
   staircase, just take the first step.”
   Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.



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