Default account for auto-interest payments

Sam Varshavchik mrsam at courier-mta.com
Wed May 14 18:40:34 EDT 2008


Fred Bone writes:

> On 14 May 2008 at 9:35, Derek Atkins said:
> 
>> Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com> writes:
>> 
>> > Derek Atkins writes:
>> >
>> >> Andreas Köhler <andi5.py at gmx.net> writes:
>> >>
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>>
>> >>> Am Montag, den 12.05.2008, 11:38 -0400 schrieb Derek Atkins:
>> >>>> Andreas Köhler <andi5.py at gmx.net> writes:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> > An alternative would be to have a global gconf setting for the last
>> >>>> > account used for auto-interest payments.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> But it's not global.  It's per account.  And it's DEFINITELY not
>> >>>> global across data files.
>> >>>
>> >>> A bad alternative, indeed.  Was just a test ;-)
>> >>>
>> >>>> Now, you COULD use a KVP entry to store it in the Account info.
>> >>>
>> >>> Or do you think one could save some flag as KVP slot of the payment
>> >>> transaction and look up the latest transaction with that flag?  I am
>> >>> not sure whether this feature is needed (of course it is ;-)) and
>> >>> which way to go.  OTOH, it should not be too hard to implement or
>> >>> break backwards compatibility.  So patches are welcome as usual.
>> >>
>> >> Well, what it does NOW is look backwards through the account looking
>> >> for the most recent 'payment' transaction.   But we could create a new
>> >> KVP entry to prevent the need for the search.  *shrugs*
>> >
>> > Uh, what does "payment" mean, in this context? Because I've already
>> > reconciled the same account more than once, and each time I had to
>> > manually select the expense account for the interest bucket, posting the
>> > resulting entry to the register, with the correct interest expense
>> > account. The next time I went to reconcile the account, the
>> > auto-interest dialog still came up with the bad default.
>> 
>> Sorry, I'm talking about something slightly different.  I'm talking
>> about the auto-payment feature when you reconcile a CC account.  The
>> dialog that comes up is the same code as the auto-interest.
> 
> I still can't see what the OP's problem is. As soon as you tab out of the 
> "Description" box, it identifies the correct accounts(*). It does, 
> unfortunately, manage to treat it as a payment-in, so you ned to enter a 
> negative amount in the first place, but hey ...

Oh, you have something entered in "Description"? My description field is 
blank, and I just tab through it, without entering anything.

So, I just did an experiment:

1) Reconcile my savings account

2) The auto-interest dialog came up and, as usual, the payment from is also 
the savings account.

3) I type in a $1.00 for the interest, manually type "Interest" in the 
description field, manually select the "Savings Interest" account for 
"Payment From", then proceed to finish reconciling.

4) I go back and reconcile my savings account again

5) The auto-interest dialog comes up. Description is blank. The default 
"Payment from" account is still the savings account. I type in another 
sawbuck for the interest, tab to the description field, begin typing "In", 
then autofill the field, and tab ahead. The "Payment from" account does not 
change, when I autofill the Description field. It's still wrongly set to the 
same account I'm reconciling. I select "Savings interest" again, for 
"Payment from".

You never guess what happens next:

"You cannot transfer from/to the same account"

Careful examination shows that: even though I pushed the reconcile button on 
the savings account's ledger tab, the "reconcile from" list box (in the 
auto-interest dialog, which is grayed out and does not accept input) has 
"Savings Interest" account selected, instead of the savings account that I'm 
actually reconciling.

Even more careful examination shows that when the dialog comes up initially, 
the savings account gets correctly selected in the grayed out "Reconcile 
account" list box. As soon as I autofill "Interest" in the "Description" 
field, rather than changing the default account in the "Payment from" list 
box, the account selected in the disabled "Reconcile account" list is 
changed instead!

So, part of what you say is true: when I autofill the description field, the 
reconcile account gets changed, but, for me, the wrong account gets zapped. 
Instead of changing "Payment from", it's the "Reconcile from" account that 
gets set. This is obviously fubared, because "Reconcile from" is grayed out 
and cannot be edited. No way to fix this except to abort the reconcile 
completely.

Again, this is Gnucash 2.2.4. I'll just follow someone else's advice of 
manually booking the interest payment in the ledger tab, and avoid the 
auto-interest dialog completely.

I verified my account register. The savings account has "Account Type" set 
to "Bank", and "Savings Interest"'s account type is "Income". They were all 
created by Gnucash's wizard, and I did not mess with them.


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