Involuntarily created additional account

Leslie Katz lesliek at ozemail.com.au
Sat Jul 15 21:24:41 EDT 2006


Josh Sled wrote:
> Using the Imbalance account, in fact, is still double-entry: instead of
> correctly entering against the relevant other (usually Expense) account,
> the Imbalance account is being substituted so that the transaction is
> always balanced, albeit in a useless manner.
>   
>
The above statement made me realise that I'm silly to be worrying about 
the effect on the operation of Gnucash of using the automatically 
generated Imbalance account. If using that account causes difficulty, 
all I have to do is create an account of my own called, say, "Null" and 
use it instead for all countervailing entries, although, consistently 
with your comment about the Imbalance account, the state of a Null 
account would tell me nothing useful.
> I'd be curious to see your datafile.
Again, I'm probably heterodox. I've got two data files.

>   I suspect that you don't have an
> Expense-account hierarchy; that your transactions are entirely against
> {Assets:Accounts:Checking} (or whatever) and {Imbalance-AUD}.
>   
Quite right. One file had as accounts only the names of my bank and 
credit card accounts. Now, it also has an Imbalance account. The other 
file has only the names of the shares I hold. I suppose when I next buy 
or sell any shares, I'll either end up with an Imbalance account in that 
file as well or else create a Null account for it.

One final comment--I hope you don't think that I'm ungrateful for your 
trying to emphasise to me to the benefits of double-entry bookkeeping. I 
am grateful for it, even though I'm too set in my ways to switch.

Best wishes,

Leslie


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