Involuntarily created additional account
Leslie Katz
lesliek at ozemail.com.au
Sat Jul 15 21:24:41 EDT 2006
Josh Sled wrote:
> Using the Imbalance account, in fact, is still double-entry: instead of
> correctly entering against the relevant other (usually Expense) account,
> the Imbalance account is being substituted so that the transaction is
> always balanced, albeit in a useless manner.
>
>
The above statement made me realise that I'm silly to be worrying about
the effect on the operation of Gnucash of using the automatically
generated Imbalance account. If using that account causes difficulty,
all I have to do is create an account of my own called, say, "Null" and
use it instead for all countervailing entries, although, consistently
with your comment about the Imbalance account, the state of a Null
account would tell me nothing useful.
> I'd be curious to see your datafile.
Again, I'm probably heterodox. I've got two data files.
> I suspect that you don't have an
> Expense-account hierarchy; that your transactions are entirely against
> {Assets:Accounts:Checking} (or whatever) and {Imbalance-AUD}.
>
Quite right. One file had as accounts only the names of my bank and
credit card accounts. Now, it also has an Imbalance account. The other
file has only the names of the shares I hold. I suppose when I next buy
or sell any shares, I'll either end up with an Imbalance account in that
file as well or else create a Null account for it.
One final comment--I hope you don't think that I'm ungrateful for your
trying to emphasise to me to the benefits of double-entry bookkeeping. I
am grateful for it, even though I'm too set in my ways to switch.
Best wishes,
Leslie
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