account aliases (was "account grouping?")

[Dave Peticolas]

Pete Yadlowsky writes:
> Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> 
> > In the upcoming development version, you can have "hyperlinks" to
> > reports to account registers, and you will be able to replace the
> > current front page with a bunch of custom "reports", so what you will
> > be able to do is write a report that contains the accounts laid out in
> > any order you so choose and then put *that* on the main window.
> 
> Sounds interesting, thanks. The mention of links brings up another
> thought I had while setting up my accounts: account aliases. Consider a
> couple of expense account trees:
> 
> 	Insurance
> 		Medical
> 		Homeowners
> 		Auto
> 
> 	Automotive
> 		Fuel
> 		Maintenance
> 		Insurance
> 
> It'd be useful if "Insurance:Auto" and "Automotive:Insurance" could me
> made to refer to the same account so you could access it on any of
> several reasonable paths. Something like symbolic links. If no one
> thinks this is a bad idea and something like it isn't already in the
> works, I may just roll up my sleeves and take a crack at it myself.

For reporting purposes, I think being able to classify the same
account in different ways is very important as your example shows.

However, actually putting 'symbolic links' in the data model of the
engine might introduce more complexity than it is worth. I think the
basic problem is that whenever you compute summaries, you have to make
sure you don't count the same thing twice. A lot of existing logic
would probably have to be changed to accomodate that.

dave