New "Title" type nodes in Balance & PL reports

I would like to share with you a little, but useful enhancement, available starting from Openbravo MP28, that can be interesting to anybody configuring a chart of accounting, either as part of developing a localization or simply to adapt it to the needs of your company.

A new check-box is available in the Element Value tab (at Financial Management || Accounting || Setup || Account Tree || Element) named "Title Node":
This allows to print nodes in the Balance Sheet & PL report (at Financial Management || Accounting || Analysis Tools) with no amount, just as information or title of a report section, but located inside the report, as one node, with it's corresponding font size and style. This node will always be displayed, regardless of the value of the "Show only accounts with value" flag. For example, let's have a look to the following report:
where Total Expenses and Total Revenues nodes are calculated through operands, as a sum of the two nodes above them.
In this case, nodes 1.1 and 1.2, if displayed, will show duplicated amounts, as shown in this example:
As you can see, amounts are duplicated in the 1.1 and 1.2 nodes. These nodes must be shown, as are part of the structure of the report, but the amount obtained is not useful at all, so we should flag them as "Title Node". Let's see, then, the result:
For further information about how to configure this report, you can have a look at the configuration manual, or the Balance Sheet articles in our wiki.

Building a Localization Pack (I)

This is the first of several posts that we are going to publish from the Openbravo Localization Team on how to develop localization features. We will be using the recently released Spanish Localization Packs as an example, and we will demonstrate how can you re-use them to support the localization needs of other regions, or extend them in order to add further capabilities for Spain. Additionally, since the Spanish Localization Packs include many sophisticated features, these blog posts can also benefit any developer interested in developing modular capabilities for Openbravo.

In this first post, I will talk about the Tax Report Launcher, that allows the user to retrieve taxing information from the ERP, and put that figures into a file (such as a VAT statement to be presented on-line, for example). This is a public module that everybody can install. We invite localizers to benefit from it, and develop and release reports on top of it, as new extension modules.

If you have a look to the module itself, you will realize that is not that complex thing, but a really good idea. Let me introduce you to the concept of Parameter. A report created in the tax report launcher, defines a set of parameters (following the VAT example, a parameter could be Sales for 16% VAT). This parameter can be associated to one or more tax rates defined in the client. This association is done a 100% through the UI:

* Definition of the parameters in a report to be run over the tax report launcher

* In linked items, all tax rates associated to this parameter are shown.

* Assignation of a parameter to a tax rate

In the case of the Spanish Localization Packs, a Taxes for Spain module has been released, with the configuration needed for the most part of small and medium companies in Spain. When a report is developed, it includes a dataset that assigns corresponding tax parameters of the report, to the existing tax rates in the Taxes for Spain module (in the VAT statement example, the report will create all the parameters, and one of them could be the Domestic Sales where VAT 16% was applied parameter; at the same time, will associate the Sales 16% VAT tax rate to this parameter). This way, user don't need to configure anything manually.

The Launcher also defines a Java public interface. Each report running on this launcher will have a Java class implementing this template. This code will implement all the business logic of the report. The good thing is that the developer will be able to retrieve all the tax rates associated to each of the defined parameters (in the example of the VAT statement, user could query database, asking for the total amount of the posted transactions in the system due to domestic sales operations subject to the VAT 16% tax rate).

Once those amounts are retrieved, and calculations are done, the result can be presented to the user as a file, suitable for on-line submission. Let's put all of this in a simple picture:

Two examples of reports developed using the Tax Report Launcher are AEAT 347 and AEAT 349.

If I succeeded in arousing your curiosity, please have a look to the webinar we recorded regarding this topic for further information!

See you in the next post!

Novedades sobre las NICs

Hola a todos,

Se encuentran disponibles en el área de descargas de sourceforge las últimas versiones de los ficheros de cuentas del nuevo plan general contable, tanto el de pymes, como el general, válidas tanto para la versión 2.35 como la 2.40 de Openbravo ERP. Se ha realizado una profunda revisión de los mismos:

• Se han añadido los grupos 8 y 9 en el plan general


• Se ha rediseñado el árbol de forma que existan subcuentas para todas las cuentas existentes, y todos los nodos cuelguen de los padres correspondientes. Para ello ha sido necesario "partir" algún nodo. Por ejemplo, según el BOE, en el balance de situación la cuenta 5104 se muestra bajo el epígrafe P.C.IV, y la cuenta 5105 bajo el epígrafe P.C.III.1, por lo que ambas cuentas deben colgar de padres distintos, por lo que el nodo 510 se ha omitido en este caso.


• Existen nodos que, según su signo, deben mostrarse en una ubicación de los informes contables, o en otra. Por ejemplo la cuenta 551. Para mostrar este comportamiento se han creado dos subcuentas: la 55100, que sólo se mostrará en caso de ser positiva, y la (55100) que se mostrará si muestra saldo negativo.

Para implementar este último punto, es necesario establecer la característica ShowValueCond de estas cuentas, y esto no puede establecerse a través de una creación de entidad, ni de una importación de cuentas, por lo que se publican junto con los ficheros de cuentas unos scripts que establecen estos valores.

También hay disponibles dos scripts (plan general y plan para PYMEs) para actualizar bases de datos con clientes ya funcionando, con una versión del fichero de cuentas anterior a la última. Son también válidos para las versiones 2.35 y la 2.40 de la aplicación. Corriendo estos scripts se actualizará el árbol de cuentas a la última versión, sin necesidad de hacer de nuevo una importación de cuentas.

Podéis encontrar más información en la página de localización de España en nuestra wiki, y para cualquier pregunta os animo a visitar este post sobre las NIC en nuestros foros.


Un saludo a todos!


David Alsasua Egea