[GNC-dev] Using "main sections placeholder accounts" in chart of accounts' templates

[Giuseppe Foti]

   Good morning, devs

   I'm opening a topic to discuss the practice to have main sections
   placeholders accounts in charts of accounts.

   In the embedded charts of accounts using those seem to be the standard,
   so in every chart of accounts are there placeholder accounts for:

   - Equity

   - Liabilities

   - Assets

   - Revenues

   - Expenses

   This behaviour seems to be obvious but it can be counterproductive when
   creating reports because all reports have sections header and only for
   some of those you can choose if to show sections headers or not.

   I am preparing a chart of accounts useful for Italian small no-profit
   organizations, trying to comply with new  Government's rules and I'd
   like to discuss this topic before committing the chart.

   Ordering accounts can be made by assigning codes to accounts (I do this
   starting the account code with letters and numbers used in the
   Government report standard for sections and subsections)

   More:

   I think it could be useful to use colours to mark different kind of
   accounts (or accounts in different sections) to help people to
   understand what kind of account they are importing/using. I have just
   found this company's work on the net but I don't think is there a
   defined standard somewhere ([1]https://www.coloraccounting.com/) but it
   seems Gnucash Documentations discourages to embed colours in chart of
   accounts' templates.

   As fell suggested
   ([2]https://lists.gnucash.org/logs/2020/12/13.html#T04:11:12), let's
   discuss this topic.

References

   1. https://www.coloraccounting.com/
   2. https://lists.gnucash.org/logs/2020/12/13.html#T04:11:12