Any Interest in Configurable Imbalance name

[Derrick Hudson]

On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 09:51:20AM -0500, Lincoln A. Baxter wrote:
| 
| On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 21:25 -0500, Derrick Hudson wrote:
| > 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.
| 
| Really?

Yes.  I just verified it.

The Imbalance account is only special in the automatic use of its
name.  Once I fixed all of the transactions so none of their splits
reference the Imbalance account, the account can be deleted with no
loss of data.

| The imbalance accounts still list the split transactions that
| now have $0 entries.  If one tries to delete the account, one gets a
| warning about deleting all the transactions.  Its this not actually
| going to happen when one deletes the account.
| 
| I would be more comfortable, if one could remove the $0 split from the
| transaction. But I can't find a way to do that. (see my other post on
| this subject)

There are a couple of ways you can correct a transaction so that it
does not reference an account (Imbalance-* or any other account).

A)
    1) Change the account attribute of the existing split
    2) click the "Enter" button on the toolbar to save ("record") the change
        (or press the "enter" key)

B)
    1) Adjust the splits so that the split you don't want has a $0
        value, and the transaction is still balanced
            [I think this is where you are currently]

    Keyboard:
        2) delete any memo text
        3) tab to the account field
        4) press the 'delete' key to clear the account field
        5) tab to the debit field (delete any value that may be present)
        6) tab to the credit field (delete any value that may be present)
        7) tab to the next split
        *Note: if you use the arrow key to move off the split instead
            of tab, the account field will not be cleared the split
            will still exist;  tabbing off the split will interpret
            the cleared account field (along with all of the other
            fields clear) as intent to delete the split

    Mouse:
        2) select the split you want to delete
        3) click the "Delete" button on the toolbar
        4) click the "Delete Split" button in the pop-up dialog

C)
    I just tried this to see what would happen ...

    I changed all of the splits in the Imbalance-USD account to have
        $0 value and adjusted the other splits to make the transaction
        balanced.
    I then tried to delete the Imbalance-USD account from the accounts
        tree.

    As expected, a dialog warning about the transactions in the
    account was presented.  I chose the "Delete transactions" option.
    Here is where it gets interesting:  the /transactions/ were *not*
    deleted.  Only the /splits/ in that account were deleted. 

    I think the wording in the dialog is misleading by using
    "transaction" instead of "split".


To summarize, you want to delete the splits referencing Imbalance-USD
from the transaction when you correct it.  Either delete the split
after fixing the transaction, or just change the account as you
correct it.


As an additional note, I also just tried deleting the Imbalance-USD
account while the splits referencing it have non-zero value.  The
behavior is actually exactly as would be expected, although on the
surface it may appear to not work.  Each of the splits were deleted as
I told gnucash to.  Then, because a transaction can not be unbalanced,
gnucash automatically (re)created splits in each transaction
referencing a newly-(re)created Imbalance-USD account to make the
transactions balanced.

-D

-- 
Dishonest money dwindles away,
but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.
        Proverbs 13:11
 
www: http://dman13.dyndns.org/~dman/            jabber: dman at dman13.dyndns.org
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