Involuntarily created additional account

Leslie Katz lesliek at ozemail.com.au
Sat Jul 15 18:02:40 EDT 2006


Derek Atkins wrote:
> That is correct.
>
> The warning box in 1.8 was to train you make sure every transaction
> is balanced.  Honestly, it's a bug that it let you leave the transaction
> in an unbalanced state.   GnuCash 2.0 forces the issue by scrubbing your
> transaction and creating a split to the Imbalance account.  This is
> a feature.
>
> If you don't want this account, then balance your transactions.  When
> you pay for something with the credit card, specify the expence account
> that corresponds to the payment.  That's what the "Transfer" column is 
> for.
> Basically, 2.0 FORCES you to enter it always, whereas 1.8 sometimes let
> you get away with not putting something in there.
>
> If all you want is a checkbok balancer, there are more appropriate tools.
> If, however, you really want to keep track of your income and expences
> in a way that you could show your accountant, then yes, gnucash is the
> tool for you.
For a while before the release of v 2, I'd become comfortable using 
Gnucash, both for bank account/credit card purposes and for shares 
purposes. I'd like now to use v 2 for a number of good reasons, even if 
I don't take advantage of a key part of its functionality.

After receiving your reply, I did some testing on my bank 
accounts/credit card file. It seemed to me that entered debits and 
credits, no matter in what account in that file, worked as they had in 
the past, even if I didn't make some countervailing entry. The only 
difference was that, whereas before I had to tick the manual balance box 
before an entry was completed, now I have to contend with the existence 
of a single new account, Imbalance-AUD, which automatically either 
shrinks or grows, depending on the nature of my "real" entry in one of 
the other accounts.

I'm quite happy to live with that new arrangement, which seems to me to 
be simply a minor alteration of my former arrangement (and which 
requires even less work by me than the former arrangement!), unless 
there are some adverse consequences of it that don't now occur to me.

If there are any such consequences, I'd be very grateful if you'd tell 
me what they are. If there aren't, then I'll happily use v 2.

Thank you for your reply and for all the help you've given me in the past.

Leslie


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