account organization

[Andrew Pimlott]

A couple of practical questions about organizing and managing
accounts:

1.  If you have, say, checking and savings accounts at two banks, do
    you file the accounts as

        Assets:Current:Checking:Bank1
        Assets:Current:Checking:Bank2
        Assets:Current:Savings:Bank1
        Assets:Current:Savings:Bank2

    or

        Assets:Current:Bank1:Checking
        Assets:Current:Bank1:Savings
        Assets:Current:Bank2:Checking
        Assets:Current:Bank2:Savings

    The first is more logical, but the second is convenient for
    operations like reconcile and reports.  In this example, the
    first advantage is perhaps weak, but it weighs heavier when you
    have, say, money market and stock accounts at multiple
    investment brokerages.

    I'm know you could do this either way, but I'm wondering which
    is more popular.

2.  How do you handle the "opening balance" of a long-standing
    account for which you may enter old transactions into GNUCash?
    Ie, say you enter the opening balance as $100 at T1, then decide
    to enter a transaction of $50 at T2<T1.  The balance will now be
    $150 instead of $100.  The only solution appears to be moving
    the opening balance every time old transactions are entered,
    which would be a pain if you like to enter old statements
    piecemeal.

    It seems that storing the opening balance as account metadata
    would solve the problem, as an opening balance is really an
    assertion that the account has some balance at some time, not a
    transaction that occurs at one time.  Has anyone considered
    doing it this way?  Is there a standard accounting practice for
    this problem?

Thanks for your ideas,
Andrew