transaction corrections

[John Ralls]

On Aug 7, 2009, at 8:15 AM, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:

>>> From: Jay Seidler <jay.seidler at gmail.com>
>>> To: gnucash-devel at gnucash.org
>>> Sent: Friday, August 7, 2009 5:55:23 AM
>>> Subject: transaction corrections
>>>
>>> Gnucash is a usable program.  It however lacks something *very
>>> basic and important.*  Any professional accounting program must
>>> not allow the editing or deleting of entered transactions.   All
>>> corrections must be made by an additional correction entry which
>>> will refer to the original erroneous transaction.
>
> On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 06:44:58AM -0700, Phil Longstaff wrote:
>>
>> True.  However, gnucash is not, and does not pretend to be, a
>> professional accounting program.  I believe it started as a personal
>> accounting program and expanded to business use.
>>
>> I would not be averse to having a "professional" mode which
>> prevented transactions from being edited or deleted (other than text
>> edits to description and memos).  However, since gnucash is produced
>> by volunteers, I don't think anyone is going to jump on this in the
>> near future.
>
> further, as has been discussed here before, there is nothing to
> prevent a sufficiently sophisticated user from either 1) turning off
> the "professional" mode, making a change and then turning it back
> on, or 2) manually editting the file or database to alter
> transactions.
>
> such a feature is, IMO, useless, and provides a false sense of
> security.
>
> .02

No, the "professional mode" could be set at compile time, and ordinary  
system security measures can be used to make the gnucash files  
inaccessible to nonadministrative users except through gnucash itself.

Not that I'm interested in writing or using such a mode.

Regards,
John Ralls