[PATCH] Tax-related inconsistency in UI

[David T.]

As the user in question, I'd like to note that the Edit->Tax Options has other oddities that make it more difficult to use. 

The one that most annoyed me was the fact that the window only saves the tax setting for ONE account at a time. Thus, to set a number of accounts, you have to repeatedly open Edit->Tax Options, navigate through the account hierarchy (changing over to Income, if you're working on those accounts) to the account in question, then scroll through the list of tax lines on the right then click OK. This makes the process much more work than it needs to be.

The second part that is annoying is that the dialog happily lets you "change" all your accounts in one pass, without notifying you that only the last account you change will actually get saved. This, combined with the first part, is pretty frustrating.

I would recommend changing the Edit->Tax Options dialog to allow the user to change multiple accounts in the dialog, perhaps by adding a "Save Account Changes' button, and changing the OK button to read "Save and Exit" (its behavior could remain the same). That, or store all the account changes and commit them all on close.

David

--- On Sat, 9/27/08, J. Alex Aycinena <alex.aycinena at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: J. Alex Aycinena <alex.aycinena at gmail.com>
> Subject: [PATCH] Tax-related inconsistency in UI
> To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
> Date: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 4:49 PM
> Hello,
> 
> While testing a modified Tax Report that I submitted
> recently, I found
> what I would consider a UI inconsistency that initially
> caused my
> report to bomb until I fixed the report to handle this
> condition. That
> is, that you can set an account as 'tax-related' in
> the edit account
> dialog and then not assign it a tax code using Edit->Tax
> Options.
> Another user that was helping me test the new report
> assumed that
> by simply setting the flag, the appropriate data should
> show up on
> the report, without realizing that the Tax Options dialog
> needed to
> be used also. This is a mistake any user could easily make.
> 
> I think as easy solution is to change the account edit
> screen to display
> the tax-related field but not to allow it to be changed and
> to add a
> tooltip to the field to direct users to use the
> Edit->Tax Options dialog
> to set the flag and assign a code. Also, the help contents
> should be
> modified to make this clear.
> 
> If these changes are agreed to by the developers, I have
> attached
> two patch files to do this.
> 
> The log entry for patchfile should read:
> 
> "Changes the 'Sensitive' Property to
> 'No' from 'Yes' in 'account.glade'
> for the 'tax_related_button' widget so that the
> setting is displayed but
> cannot be changed in the account edit dialog. Sets the
> Tooltip
> property to "Use Edit->Tax Options to set the
> tax-related flag and assign
> a tax code to this account." in
> 'account.glade'."
> 
> For docs-patchfile, the log entry should read:
> 
> "Updates the Account-Actions help chapter to direct
> the user to use the
> 'Edit->Tax Options' dialog to set the
> tax-related flag and assign
> a tax code during account set up and maintenance. Indicates
> that the
> tax-related flag on the account edit dialog is display
> only."
> 
> I would appreciate any comments on this proposed change.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Alex
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