Categorization of transactions

[Eric Anopolsky]

On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 09:51 +0100, Manfred Usselmann wrote:
> expenses
>  - travelling
>    - cars
>      - car 1
>        - fuel
>        - insurance
>        - tax
>        - ...
>      - car 2
>        - fuel
>        - insurance
>        - tax
>        - ...

Hi all,

Using placeholder expense accounts as a substitute for classes works
well for small numbers of "classes" and when the number of child expense
accounts is small. 

I have four properties that each have their associated expenses. Here
are some problems I run into when the number of placeholder expense
accounts and the number of child accounts per placeholder grows:

*The accounts list becomes huge. Four properties times seven expense
accounts per property equals 28 expense accounts, not counting
placeholders. Also, since they're deeply nested, I have to do a lot of
unfolding to see them.

*Since the placeholder accounts represent properties, it's easy to see
how much I'm spending on each property by looking at the accounts list.
However, since I have four different accounts called "Electrical
Service", I have to run a report or get out a calculator to figure out
how much I'm spending on that type of utility.

*As I develop properties further, it's becoming a chore to keep expense
account names synchronized between properties. For example, we had some
plumbing problems in a house that had previously needed no work in that
area. I created a plumbing child account to keep track of those
expenses, only to discover that for another house I had been granular
enough to break it down into kitchen, bathroom, and general. To keep a
consistent account hierarchy, I had to create new accounts and
reclassify each of those transactions I had entered for the first
property.

*Since Gnucash does not have the ability to tell the difference between
a placeholder account that someone is using as a class (such as "car1"
in the above example) and a placeholder account that is not being used
as a class (such as "expenses" or "travelling"), there is no way for
Gnucash to create a "profit and loss by class" report automatically.

Cheers,
Eric

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