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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