Any Interest in Configurable Imbalance name

[Donald Allen]

On Jan 4, 2008 9:25 PM, Derrick Hudson <dman at dman13.dyndns.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 04, 2008 at 12:04:08PM -0500, Donald Allen wrote:
> | On Jan 4, 2008 11:18 AM, Jason Ahrens <jason at cougarcorp.net> wrote:
>
> | > I actually don't mind the Imbalance accounts. Every now and then I screw
> | > something up and notice that the Imbalance account has a non-0 balance,
> | > so I have to fix something.
> | >
> | > As long as the ability for accounts with an imbalanced transaction in
> | > them, and finding those imbalanced transactions is easy, I'm happy. I
> | > found the Imbalanced account a functional and obvious way to do this. I
> | > do agree though that sometimes Gnucash seems a little too eager to
> | > assign transactions into it (i.e.: When I'm still editing values in a
> | > split and haven't finalized it yet... Though I think Gnucash assumes
> | > that if I press "enter", it means I'm done...)
> |
> | Did you ever use v1.8.x? I'm trying to find out if you ever
> | experienced the behavior some of us (Derek, Adam, me) are advocating
> | returning to.
>
> I did.  The only visible difference in the register is "" vs
> "Imbalance-USD".
>
> No version (that I have used; I think 1.6 may have been the earliest)
> allowed entering an unbalanced transaction.  However, prior versions
> did allow for a split to have no account.  It really is a subtle
> semantic difference in the implementation.  Whether a split doesn't
> exist at all or exists with no account, either way defeats the purpose
> of double-entry accounting.
>
>
> I think that automatically using "Imbalance-USD" as a placeholder for
> the splits that previously would have been hidden with no account is a
> good thing.  A user can always delete the account when they don't have
> any errors.  It is a useful aid in finding transactions that were
> entered incompletely.
>
> As for gnucash being "too eager" to assign splits to the imbalance
> account, I have noticed that as well.  While entering data, sometimes
> I tend to press "enter" to move down to the next split.  This is
> interpreted as recording (comitting) the transaction, so gnucash fills
> in the missing "imbalance" split.  However, if I use tab (or the down
> arrow), this does not occur.  I would consider this either pebkac or a
> usability issue, however when the behavior is understood it is not
> actually a problem.
>
> I would also find it reasonable if gnucash did not automatically
> create the imbalance account, if it /also/ did not allow a split to
> have no account.  A user who wants to intentionally circumvent the
> principles of double-entry can choose to create such an account and
> assign splits to it when they want to.

There may be some confusion in this discussion. First, I think several
of us, myself included but perhaps not you, may be having trouble
remembering how 1.8 actually worked. So there may be a gap between
what is being proposed for the future and what 1.8 actually did. I
think what Adam, Derek, and I (and others) are advocating is an option
to prevent the user from entering a transaction that doesn't balance.
Whether that's what 1.8 did is beside the point (though your
discussion of it is justified, since I mentioned 1.8 as having the
desired behavior, which may not be correct), that's the proposal.

/Don
>
> -D
>
> --
> One OS to rule them all, one OS to find them,
> One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
> In the Land of Redmond, where the Shadows lie.
>
> www: http://dman13.dyndns.org/~dman/            jabber: dman at dman13.dyndns.org
>
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