global delete of transactions

[Derek Atkins]

CVS has code that effectively does "book end" by saving off the transactions
prior to some date into a new file and then resetting the accounts and balances
appropriately.  I do not know how well-tested this code is, or even if there's
a hook in the UI.  But I do know that Linas was working on this a while ago in
HEAD.

-derek

Quoting Neil Williams <linux at codehelp.co.uk>:

> On Friday 06 May 2005 6:13 pm, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> > Josh Sled wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2005-05-06 at 17:05 +0200, Arthur Gregson wrote:
> > >>is it possible to delete previous years transactions from all accounts
> > >>globally.....
> > >      NOTE this is NOT recommended or supported!!! Keep data file
> > >      backups.
> >
> > this question keeps popping up on the list every few weeks.
> 
> And it still isn't going to be supported as a script hack!
> 
> > It should be 
> > fairly simple to write a script to do this
> 
> If it was that simple, it would be recommended and supported. It is not this
> 
> simple but it is being enabled via the work on partial books, QSF export and
> 
> G2.
> 
> > and post it up somewhere. 
> > What are some options that could be included?
> 
> How to handle references that point to a transaction that has been hacked
> from 
> the file.
> 
> How to handle account balances so that you create a usable opening balance
> for 
> the point immediately AFTER the removed transactions.
> 
> > I'm thinking:
> >
> > 1. Delete all transactions from a specified date range
> 
> And create a new opening balance.
> 
> Transactions cannot be deleted mid-range - you should not have a gap in the 
> accounts. All you should be considering is removing the oldest transactions 
> from the beginning of the file to a certain date. This is book-closing and 
> the code is still being developed. Hacks are not the answer.
> 
> > 2. Summarize all transactions from a date range and enter one cumulative
> > transaction to allow past year reporting (allowing you to keep past year
> > information more compactly. sort of like intuits end-of-year stuff).
> > This may be more of a business feature, i suppose to compare sales from
> > past years etc.
> 
> ??? How can you seriously recommend a gap like that ???
> 
> There will be support for *exporting* transactions between certain dates and
> 
> this will include creating the relevant opening balance. It cannot be 
> sensible to remove an entire set of reconciled transactions leaving a 
> horrible gap.
> 
> > 3 Make a backup of transactions from a date range in a seperate file.
> 
> So what you really want is the export - you retain the data in one file and 
> create a new file with a subset of that data.
> 
> That is being done but I would not recommend hacking it - data integrity is 
> too important.
> 
> > any others?
> >
> > this seems to be something that doesn't need to be done within gnucash
> > and for expediency of implementation might ultimately be easier from a
> > simple (heh) script
> 
> I cannot agree with that assessment. It absolutely needs to be done within 
> GnuCash - actually within the QOF engine - because of the need to handle the
> 
> loose ends, balances and references.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Neil Williams
> =============
> http://www.data-freedom.org/
> http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
> http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
> 
> 


-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available