Actions - what for?

[Cory Dodt]

--- Linas Vepstas <linas@linas.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 12:55:08AM -0700, Cory Dodt was heard to remark:
> > I've just noticed that 1.5.x doesn't seem to save whatever you put
> into
> > the Action field in the double-line register.  In fact, it deletes
> them if
> > you had anything there and upgraded from 1.4.x.  
> > 
> > This isn't crucial, since I don't know what it's for.  I can see that
> > there are different types of transactions in there depending on the
> > account type- for example Buy for credit cards and POS for checking
> > accounts.  But beyond that I don't see the point.  Is it just another
> way
> > to search for transactions?  Or is there a real accounting meaning
> behind
> > each of the different actions?  They don't seem to affect the rest of
> the
> > transaction.  For example, gnucash treats as valid a "Buy" action
> attached
> > to a credit card payment.
> 
> there is no accounting meaning attached to 'action'. Its original intent
> was to allow the user to classify transactions in thier own
> user-definable,
> extensible way, and then be able to use the 'action' field to generate
> reports, graphs.  
> 
> e.g. show graph of interest income vs. dividend income. 
> 
> One way that gnucash would know that something was 'dividend income'
> was if you had marked it that way in 'action'.   (The other way is to
> have
> separate dividend and interest income accounts, but that leads to an
> explosion in the number of accounts: a dozen accounts might need a
> hundred
> subaccounts indiciating 'what type' of income and expense the thing was:
> bleach. So action s a qucik & easy way of marking this kind of info
> without
> having to put a deep meaning into it ...)
> 
> The mechanism is somewhat in disrepair; there are some nice ways to
> generalize it (such as assigning more than one action to a split,
> allowing
> user to add arbitrary actions,  customizing the list of actions to be
> different for different accounts).   Never mind that I'm not sure that
> the
> graphing & reporting side is using this field, just yet ...
> 
> 
> --linas

I actually do use accounts to track these kinds of things.  I have an
interest account and, did I have any didvidend interest, I would have an
account for that too.  It seems to me you don't actually need a set of
these for each bank account - one income account for interest will do the
trick.  Any account that pays you interest goes into
Income:Banking:Interest, and to generate a report on just one account you
would do the Scheme equivalent of 
SELECT x,y,z FROM TRANSACTIONS where SOURCE_ACCOUNT='Assets:Cash
Accounts:My Checking' AND DEST_ACCOUNT='Income:Banking:Interest' 
(I'm a SQL guy myself).



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