Possible problem with splits
Mike or Penny Novack
stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Fri Jan 25 08:31:49 EST 2008
I was probably not being clear enough?
With most transactions, even most split transactions, it is perfectly
reasonable that the transaction description be the same everywhere. The
point is that the "description" give MEANINGFUL information about the
transaction. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the default behavior
-- if there is NO description provided for some line of the split, use
the "main" description.
However there are other sorts of splits where this is not so, and a bank
deposit transaction is a good example. From the point of view of the
account "bank account" perfectly reasonable that the description be
"deposit". But for each of the lines of the split, that is an unuseful
description. OF COURSE the checks were deposited (what else could have
been done with them -- a business or organization doesn't cash received
checks, or at least shouldn't be doing that).
And yes of course, possible to expand the split in the other account to
see the description. But if there were MANY items in that deposit,
onerous to look at it that way. To answer the explanation "but the split
simply appears in each affected account" (when not expanded) might I
point out that this is NOT so. GnuCash correctly displays for an
"amount" the amount from that line. Presumably not all that difficult to
have it also display the description entered for that line of the split
IF there was one (if blank, use the main description just as now). In
the expanded view should of course use the main description just as it
does now.
Understand? In many/most cases you ARE interested in the other parts of
a split transaction. But in the case of splits for things like bank
deposits there is no real connection between the items except that they
were all deposited on one trip to the bank entered on the same deposit slip.
Please note that it took me a year's worth of data before I noticed
this. Our volume is very low and and usually I don't have multiple items
on a deposit slip.
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