Null Account and more

[Perry Smith]

Derek has it correct.  There are multiple accounts called "Fidelity 
Plus".  One is a top level assert account with stocks below.  Another 
"Fidelity Plus" account is a child of Interest and of type expense.

So, I'm hearing that an income account can have a child that is an 
expense account.  O.k.   That seems odd to me but o.k.

So, it looks like the only real mystery at this point is why we have 
InterestFidelity Ultra:<NULL> instead of just Interest: Fidelity

I'm reading the Gnucash design document as well as the guile reference 
guild today.  My hope is to set a break point where the account with no 
name is created during the import and then try and figure out how we 
got there but I have a lot to learn first.

BTW, I find it absolutely amazing that you guys can import anything at 
all from a QIF file.  What a totally lame "spec".  Did you read that 
even Quicken 2005 is going to abandon it completely?  (I bumped into 
that while surfing to find the QIF spec.)

Thanks for your help guys.
Perry

On Jul 23, 2004, at 9:01 AM, Derek Atkins wrote:

> linas at linas.org (Linas Vepstas) writes:
>
>> On Thu, Jul 22, 2004 at 11:11:56AM -0500, Perry Smith was heard to 
>> remark:
>>>
>>> When gnucash imported this, it created a sub account under "Interest"
>>> called "Fidelity Ultra" and Fidelity Ultra has a subaccount with no
>>> name.  I can see this in the xml as well as the Accounts window.  
>>> There
>>
>> Possibly a bug in the qif importer ???
>
> Could be.  That code is a pile of hairballs...
>
>>>  "Interest" in quicken as well as gnucash is an expense but Fidelity
>>> Ultra is an income account and the account with no name is an income
>>
>> Bad.  'Fidelity Ultra' should be an asset account of some kind, not
>> an income account.  You cannot use income/expense accounts to hold
>> anything of value.  Income/expense accounts are meant only to record
>> income or expenses, for use in cash-flow type reports.
>
> Not necessarily...  What should happen, IIRC, is that you'll get
> an account tree that looks something like this:
>
> Assets
>   +- Fidelity Ultra
>      +- (stocks here)
>
> Income
>   +- Interest
>      +- Fidelity Ultra
>
> So in essence we'd get the interest income as a transfer from
> Income:Interest:Fidelity Ultra -> Assets:Fidelity Ultra.
>
> -derek
>
> -- 
>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>