Preventing the "Imbalance-*" accounts from getting used.

[Donald Allen]

I just received the digest with the msg below and at least in gmail,
aggressive line-wrapping makes it hard to understand my attempt to describe
the initial transaction. Let me describe it in words, to be sure it's clear:
the single-line transaction shows a credit of $1010 from the checking
account. The splits are: a $1000 debit to Liabilities:Foo loan and a $10
debit to Expenses:Interest on Foo loan, as well as the $1010 credit from
Assets:Checking acct. The rest should be immune to formatting problems.

/Don


On 12/23/06, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's an example where I think the Rel. 2 user-interface behavior needs
> to be improved along the lines we've been discussing:
>
> Suppose you've previous entered a transaction in your checking account to
> make a payment involving two accounts on the debit side ( e.g., a loan,
> where you are paying principal and interest and thus accounting for them in
> separate accounts). Here's what the single-line transaction looks like:
>       Description             Account
> Debit             Credit
> Foo loan pmt              --Split
> Transaction--                                 1010
>
> Here's what the splits look like:
>       Description             Account
> Debit             Credit
>                              Liabilities:Foo loan                     1000
>                              Expenses:Interest on Foo loan     10
>                             Assets:Checking
> acct                                     1010
>
> Now suppose for some reason I want to make another payment on this loan in
> a different amount. Maybe I'm doubling up the payments. So I start a new
> transaction with the register in single-line mode by typing 'Foo ...' in the
> Description column in the new-transaction row, and gnucash obligingly fills
> in the details of the previous transaction I did. So I tab over to the
> credit column, and enter the new total amount of the payment, say 2010,
> there. Then I hit tab again. This enters the transaction, but it's
> imbalanced and gnucash says nothing about it. There's still a  debit of 1000
> to the Liabilities:Foo loan account, a debit of 10 to the Expenses:Interest
> on Foo loan, and a new split, with a debit of 1000 to Imbalance-USD. While
> this is all correct, it's too silent, in my opinion. I'd much prefer to be
> notified before the transaction is committed/entered that it's imbalanced.
> Maybe a preference item, so that those who disagree can still have the
> silent behavior?
>
> /Don
>
> On 12/22/06, Donald Allen <donaldcallen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I too would like to add my voice to the opinions already stated by Adam
> > and Maf. The current method in 2.0.2 I find much less intuitive than it
> > could be, and I think Adam has it right that gnucash shouldn't let go of you
> > until you've entered a balanced transaction (I also have the impression that
> > 1.8.x behaved that way). As things stand, there are ways to innocently
> > leave a transaction unbalanced (e.g., hitting 'enter' at the wrong time)
> > and you only realize you've done so when you look at the accounts page and
> > see a non-zero balance in the imbalance account.
> >
> > /Don
> >
> >
>