[GNC] Transaction inconsistency when deleting account

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 9/3/2023 2:27 PM, Jediator wrote:
> Hi, I'm a new GC user after using QB for many years.  One problem I 
> encountered was when I delete an account with transactions (instead of 
> deleting transactions manually one at a time), the corresponding 
> transactions in other accounts won't get deleted automatically.  For 
> instance, I have a payment transaction in a credit card account 
> related to a withdraw transaction in a checking account.  When I 
> delete the credit card account with all its transactions, the related 
> withdraw transaction still remains in the checking account. Is this a 
> bug to be reported? 

No, you are not understanding a basic concept of double entry bookkeeping.

Each of those transactions in the CC account you are deleting had 
another account associated with it (at least one other account, could be 
more if a "split"). When you delete an account, you are NOT deleting the 
transactions that were there but instead moving them (that side of them 
that was in the CC account) to some other account. We'll come back to 
that. Meanwhile, the opposite side of each of those transactions remains 
where it was (in the account where it was).

So ...... let's look at one of those payment transactions more closely. 
You see it there in the account of your checking account? << you said 
you were >>  Well LOOK at one of those transactions (would be a credit 
to the checking account). What is NOW the debit side of that 
transaction. In other words, what account? THAT is what happened when 
you deleted the account for that CC, they were MOVED there, not deleted. 
You can't delete just one side of a transaction.

Question1 --- you say you were a long time QB user?  QuickBooks and not 
Quicken? Because QuickBooks is proper double entry7 bookkeeping and 
would work the same way as gnucash with regard to deleting an account. 
Of course possibly you never tried deleting an account in QuickBooks.

Question2 --- WHAT are you trying to do here? Why are you deleting the 
account of that CC? Normally, in proper bookkeeping you do NOT attempt 
to change the past. If the situation is that this CC has been closed, no 
longer being used, balance was zero at the time when closed, the account 
is now INACTIVE and you don't want to see it taking up space in your 
CoA, the action you want is HIDE, not delete.


Michael D Novack