Onboarding New Users Experience with Selecting Chart of Accounts

[neilt]

When looking at #8860 I went to review different COAs and I was confused about how a user gets enough information to select the correct COA.

For example in the "United States" They are:

1. General.xml
2. GeneralHierarchical.xml
3. Manufacturing.xml
4. Service.xml
5. UCOA-Form990.xml
6. UCOA-Form990EZ.xml

Some countries only have 1 COA, so that is simple. But for more than 1 it seems like the process to find the best version is to create a company for each COA, then go into LSMB and review each one.

I think this is problematic for new users and considering the work being done on #7853 we should make some changes to improve the new user experience.

In looking at the "United States" COA selection options above I don't get how to select one. Questions:

1. Do the UCOA* selections overlap with Manufacturing or Services or both.
2. How is General different than Manufacturing or Services. Can't all companies be put into either Service or Manufacturing.
3. Where does distribution fall in.
4. Why hierarchical versus non-hierarchical.

There are probably more questions, but the point has hopefully been made.

Options, non exclusive:

1. Full Review: Create a new feature with a button to be able to review the full selected COA before creating a new company.
2. Descriptive Review: Change the XML to add a detailed description tag. In that description should be noted the differences between the selections for any country. This description should show on the COA selection view when a specific COA is selected.

Note also that when I went to the schema definition in the XML files above, for example: https://ledgersmb.org/xml-schemas/configuration to check the schema, it was not found.

Help Wanted Action Items:

1. Modify setup.pl to show the information in the COA XML documentation tag.
2. Review COA XML files and if missing add the documentation tag with necessary documentation.
3. Fix the schema definition link not found. (https://ledgersmb.org/xml-schemas/configuration)

[ehuelsmann]

I went to review different COAs and I was confused about how a user gets enough information to select the correct COA.

The entire reason to migrate our CoA definitions to XML (from SQL scripts) is to be able to add (meta) data and parsing these files to present their content in meaningful ways to users. The ability to add a description isn't currently being used, but there is an example in the General.xml CoA for the US:

  <documentation>
    This configuration creates a general purpose chart of accounts with
    accounts for e.g. outstanding invoices (AR/AP), sales income and tax,
    various types of expenses, bank accounts and credit cards.

    Generally used in retail, warehouse, manufacturing, distribution,
    consulting, and accounting businesses.
  </documentation>

My idea is to change setup.pl to show this description and possibly the chart of accounts (account names, numbers and hierarchy) on the screen offering the choice.