account types

[David Carlson]

On 11/20/2013 4:07 AM, Martin Mainka wrote:
> Hi,
> i noticed while translating chapter "Accounts" if the tutorial guide to
> German-language, that many account types (checking, trading, currency,
> other assets, money-market...) are not available in German GnuCash
> 2.4.13. Are they obsolet, or are they coming in the new Version? If they
> are coming, what would the Purpose of this types be?
>
> best regards
>
> Martin
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> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
>

Good Question.  As a user rather than a developer I think there are two
ways to view this issue.

One is that the list of account types (sub-types?) is a very short one
that really only divides accounts into groups that get some sort of
unique handling somewhere in the program.  An easy example is Bank and
Stock accounts are handled differently in the program.
The second is a slight expansion to include differentiation by usage
that may not really make any distinction in program behavior, but may
help users see their account structure more clearly and follow good
accounting practice more easily.

The tutorial guide seems to be written from the second perspective, as
it does not mention any unique program behaviors for any of the
currently listed types.  The additional types that you found may
actually fall into the first category sometime in the future, but in
release 2.4.13 I think that they do not exist.  I personally would like
to see them added.

I did notice that the drop-down list of types in the GnuCash Edit
Account dialog is sorted differently than the tutorial documentation
list.  That is a little distracting to me.  I would prefer changing the
program rather than the documentation to resolve this point.  Should I
create an enhancement bug report about this?

I hope that the release 2.6 documentation will ultimately address both
views by including short descriptions of how the program treats the
various account (sub-) types differently.  That, however, is way beyond
the scope of the current task at hand.

David C
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