Read-only transactions; imbalances

[Derek Atkins]

"Paul A." <abrahams at acm.org> writes:

> I guess my earlier question got lost in the rest of the discussion.  Under
> what circumstances does GnuCash create read-only transactions, and why?

Well, it depends on your definition of "read only".  One possibility is
that the transactions are all reconciled ('y' in the 'R' column) and at
some point gnucash popped up a dialog asking if you wanted to modify a
reconciled transaction and you clicked 'cancel' while also selecting
"remember this".  You can reset this warning by selecting Actions ->
Reset Warnings.

> Perhaps I'm missing something pretty basic, but it seems to me that deleting
> a transaction is logically equivalent to adding a zeroing transaction, and
> adding a transaction never creates an imbalance if the transaction is
> properly formed (weird multi-currency issues aside).  If deleting an account
> means deleting all transactions in that account, then how can that create an
> imbalance?

Nope, deleting a transaction is *NOT* like adding a zeroing transaction.
You're forgetting that GnuCash is double-entry.  So if you delete the
full transaction you're deleting both the credit and the debit.  E.g.,
if you have an expense transaction where you paid $20 cash for groceries
(credit cash $20, debit groceries $20) and then delete the transaction,
your cash account will now have $20 more in it (because that credit
would be deleted)!

This is NOT the same as a zeroizing transaction.  In that case you add a
new transaction that moves that $20 expense back into Equity, so the
balance of the expense account is now $0.  And it does this without
touching your Asset account.

Also, as I mentioned in a previous email, deleting an account does not
delete all the transactions in the account, it only deletes the *SPLITS*
for the transactions that are in the account.  This leaves the other
side of the transaction in place.  So back to that $20 of groceries.  If
you delete the Groceries expense account and tell it to delete the
transactions then it will leave the $20 credit to the cash account;
which leaves this transaction imbalanced (a $20 credit without a $20
debit).

I hope this explains what's going on.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available