Any Interest in Configurable Imbalance name

[Adam Funk]

On 2008-01-05, Derrick Hudson wrote:

>| > > Didn't 1.8 create Orphan-* or Imbalance-* accounts too (perhaps just
>| > > the former)?  I'm almost sure I've had this (IMHO) problem since I
>| > > started using it.
>| >
>| > I'm PRETTY sure that the Orphan-* and Imbalance-* accounts started
>| > in 2.0, but it COULD have been 1.8..  It's been half a decade.
>| 
>| I'm more than pretty sure that it began in 2.0.
>
> I am certain that they were introduced in 2.0.

My mistake!  I was sure I'd started using GnuCash with 1.8.something;
on investigating the Ubuntu package history, I think I started with
1.8.12 but didn't use it for very long before upgrading to 2.0.


> Earlier versions of GnuCash allowed a split to have no account
> associated with it.  (this is the loophole that allowed gnc to see a
> not-correctly-balanced transaction as balanced)

That would be much worse (IMO) than creating the Imbalance-* accounts.


> Starting with 2.0, splits must reference an account.  The Orphan-*
> account was introduced for backwards compatibility with existing
> files; the Imbalance-* account was introduced to provide for
> structural validity of newly entered data.
>
> The Orphan-* account is a placeholder for all of the splits in an
> existing data file that have no account.  It does not exist for a new
> file, and can be deleted if the existing transactions are corrected.
>
> The Imbalance-* account is created in situations where previously the
> transaction would be commited with a split with no account.

Thanks for the explanation.