October 2013's newsletter

There are some new features, and we are working to some other ones.

ENHANCEMENTS

a) a user suggested that it should be possible to enter some comments on each line of a journal entry (regarding the single "posting", ie the single account debited or credited); actually, in many books' examples, there is such a comment, so we introduced this possibility -- in the journal entry form, you can now add a comment by writing it after the name of the account, preceded by a hash sign (#); see http://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/09/comments-on-single-double-entry-lines.html;

b) if you want to export the current trial balance to a spreadsheet, for further analysis, you can now decide to have a text area produced, in order to be able to copy it and paste it to the spreadsheet, instead of downloading a file; this may speed up your work: just export "inline", select all, copy, go to the spreadsheet, paste, and you're done; see http://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/09/export-of-current-trial-balance.html;

c) we added some big icons on the dashboard (we hope you like them);

d) in the public page of a firm, you can now refer to a single journal entry by specifying its number (just click on it to have the URL); for instance, you can refer to the first of second entry of the sample exercise 3 by pointing to http://learndoubleentry.org/firms/sample-exercise-03#entry1 or http://learndoubleentry.org/firms/sample-exercise-03#entry2; and you can specify the desired level of detail for the financial statements by using the "?level=x" notation (like in http://learndoubleentry.org/firms/sample-exercise-03?level=2);

e) we refactored some code, and added some comments on it, in order to start the production of self-generated documentation; if you are a developer, or just curious about the code, get in touch with us; see http://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/09/delts-apis.html;

IDEAS

We'd like to prepare some little examples of businesses' activities in order to compare the different procedures, accounting standards (and traditions) around the world. Would you like to join us in this?

We really hope that you may find LearnDoubleEntry.org useful for your exercises, and we'd love to receive some feedback from you. Any ideas on how to improve the website will be greatly welcomed. And, please, feel free to spread the word and invite other people to sign up.

         info@learndoubleentry.org

         Follow us on Twitter: @LearnDE

Export of current trial balance, inline version

(This post has been edited after its first publication.)

It is now possible to export the current trial balance values inside a textarea widget, instead of in the form of a downloadable CSV file.

You just need to select the "inline" radio button under "Fruition type" in the balance/export page:

The data will be available in a text area, and you can easily copy them in order to paste them in a spreadsheet. You might want to format the column of the spreadsheet where the codes of the code are going to be pasted as "text".

In a future blog post, we'll show how to prepare a spreadsheet to process them in a customized way.

DELT's APIs

The source code of DELT, the application on which the website learndoubleentry.org is built, is enriched by some comments that make the generation of documentation quite easy.

A zip file of the whole APIs is generated periodically. If you are interested, please contact delt.project@gmail.com for having the file shared with you.

Comments on single double entry lines

It is now possible to add comments to the single double entry lines (postings). You just need to add a hash tag (#) in the input box where the code and the name of the account are, and a comment after it.

The comments will appear in brackets and emphasized in the single lines of the journal and in the ledger.

LearnDoubleEntry.org su WiildOs

Con l'avvio dell'anno scolastico 2013/14, la versione 4.0 di WiildOs, predisposta in maniera aperta e collaborativa dal LITSA, è in distribuzione su web e, presso i supermercati COOP del Trentino, anche su DVD-rom direttamente alla cassa.

Si tratta di una distribuzione Linux specificatamente pensata per la didattica, in particolare mediante l'uso delle lavagne digitali a basso costo ottenibili con software libero e hardware semplice.

Nella sezione Lavoro / Ufficio si trova un link a LearnDoubleEntry.org, per chi vuole partire da lì per le esercitazioni contabili.

September 2013's newsletter

We made some improvements on the website and on the code behind it, so we'd like you to know about the new features.

1. BLOG

We opened a blog that we kept updated with the most important new features.
It is available at http://blog.learndoubleentry.org/.

2. SAMPLE EXERCISES

In the blog, we posted some sample exercises, that can be used as a reference to what is possible to do. We'll post other ones soon.
You can find them at http://blog.learndoubleentry.org/search/label/exercise.

3. HANDBOOK

The sample exercises and other information are linked at http://learndoubleentry.org/site/en/handbook as a sort of preliminary handbook.

4. NEW FEATURES

We introduced some new (hopefully interesting) new features in the last months:

a) for every firm, you can now select the languages that you want your account names in;

b) it is now possible to share a firm with another user, in order to complete an exercise together, if needed;

c) you can fork (duplicate) every firm of which you know the slug (see terminology, later);

d) you can get a "transaction analysis" of each journal entry (see http://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/07/explanation-of-journal-entries.html);

e) it is now possible to include or exclude some journal entries, in order to test different scenarios, if needed (seehttp://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/08/include-or-exclude-journal-entries.html);

f) you can take a snapshot of a firm's current balances, or prepare a closing entry of selected accounts (seehttp://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/08/taking-snapshot-of-firms-current.html);

g) you can select an account from a tree view window, if you don't know the name or the code of the account (seehttp://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/08/choosing-accounts-with-tree-view.html);

h) when you prepare a journal entry, the totals of debits and credits is updated every time you leave an amount field;

i) when a user signs up, he/she can ask to be resent the activation link, in case it got lost.

5. TERMINOLOGY

We prepared a blog post explaining the meaning of some of the terms we used. It is avalaible athttp://blog.learndoubleentry.org/2013/07/notes-about-terminology.html.

6. BUG FIXES

Many minor bugs have been fixed. Thanks to the users that let us know about them!

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We really hope that you may find LearnDoubleEntry.org useful for your exercises, and we'd love to receive some feedback from you. Any ideas on how to improve the website will be greatly welcomed. And, please, feel free to spread the word and invite other people to sign up.

         info@learndoubleentry.org

         Follow us on Twitter: @LearnDE

Choosing accounts with the tree view

Version 1.0.13 of DELT is out, and with it the possibility of choosing an account in a tree view of the Chart of Accounts.

To activate the tree view pop-up window, you just need to double-click on the account name field.