subtotals in reports; accounts with children and transactions

[Christopher Browne]

On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 13:50:18 PDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Charlton Rose <gnucash-devel@sharkysoft.com>  said:
> On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Christian Stimming wrote:
> 
> > Once again we had the question whether it makes sense at all to have
> > accounts with children in the hierarchy (non-leaf accounts) with
> > transactions in them.  ...  But in the long run we should consider
> > adding a flag to the account structure where the user can specify
> > "I'll not be using this account for transactions, only as
> > parent-account".

> If used correctly, parent accounts represent generalizations while
> child accounts represent specializations.  For this reason, I think
> it makes a lot of sense to aggregate the subtotals into the parent
> account, even if it makes it difficult to see what the parent's
> actual contribution to the total might be.  To solve that problem,
> perhaps you could display two numbers in main window.  At any rate,
> don't remove that feature; make it a user preference.

This is a clear case where there are multiple valid answers.

There are legitimate reasons to care about _both_ values that could be
displayed, namely:

  a) The net value of the transactions associated with an account, and

  b) The net value of the transactions associated with an account _and
     its children_.

Both values are important.

I would, frankly, suggest a _third_ approach to the hierarchy, which
would be to not make the (arguable) mistake of pretending that A/R or
A/P are actually, in any way, "cash."

I'd suggest, for that sort of example, a hierarchy looking something
like:

Current Assets
  Checking Account
  Savings Account
  Accounts Receivable
  Accounts Payable

That reflects better the fact that the payables/receivables aren't
"subservient" to the checking account; it attaches _all_ the accounts
to a more abstract "parent," called _Current Assets_.

[Aside: The fact that Payables are normally liabilities puts a bit of
a lie into the above; "Current Items" is probably more accurate, but
reads badly.  And those that _really_ care will probably go with a
substantially different hierarchy anyways...]
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