bulk delete transactions

[Tarlika Elisabeth Schmitz]

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:46:17 -0700
Jeff Kletsky <gnucash at allycomm.com> wrote:

>On 3/18/2010 5:13 PM, Tarlika Elisabeth Schmitz wrote:
>> On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:31:43 -0500
>> Mike or Penny Novack<stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>  wrote:
>>
>>    
>>>> I would like to delete a few thousand transactions - all the ones
>>>> against above account.
>>>>[...]
>> I have now decided to enter certain data in a different way to reduce
>> clutter and make them easier to read and reconcile. [...]
>>
>>
>> Simplified example:
>> involving accounts: Asset.A, Liability.A, Expense,Income
>>
>> Asset.A: I used to record a reduction of available funds by entering
>> a transaction against Liability.A. When this transaction was finally
>> settled I posted an opposing transaction against Liability.A, so
>> eventually Liability.A would always be zero.
>> Then I recorded income and expenses as appropriate.
>>
>> 12/03/2010 £10 ->  Liability.A
>> 13/03/2010 £10<- Liability.A
>> 13/03/2010 £10 ->  Expense
>>
>>[...]
>
>
>This sounds a lot like the "standard" practice of using  accounts 
>payable (A/P) or accounts receivable (A/R)
>
>[...], for personal use I
>use it to deal with "delayed" transfers so that the dates in both the 
>accounts "match" with my records in the appropriate account.
>
>2010-03-18 $1000 Asset Checking -> A/P Due to Credit Card (date
>transfer initiated)
>2010-03-22 $1000 A/P Due to Credit Card -> Liability Credit Card (date 
>transfer posted to destination)

Having mulled over your post overnight, it has now come back to me why I
designed my transactions that way:

I record a transaction as liability when it reduces my available
balance in Asset.A. This way I have a note of all pending
transactions and, most importantly, the available balance. And a 
non-zero Liability.A tells me that transactions are awaiting settlement
(sanity check if I forget to settle).

I record income and expense on settlement day so they fall within the
same "accounting period"; there can be months between balance reduction
and settlement. The P&L figures would make no sense if I recorded
the expense when the balances is reduced.



The change I considered the other day was to record the liability but
to delete it on settlement day rather than posting an opposing
transaction to Liability. This has been prompted by two things:

a) The number of my transactions has increased (dozens per day) and will
continue to do so.
b) The majority of my transactions are settled on the same day now, in
which case I thought I might just as well record the balance reduction
as expense straight away.

My main bug-bears are:
a) data entry becomes quite time consuming - liability to/from doubles
data entry

b) reconciliation is made more difficult because of the extra to/from
liability transactions; I sometimes spend an hour trying to spot the
difference. Unfortunately, the reconcile window does not show the Notes
field, which would help me identify the transaction, made worse
by the fact that I have loads of transactions of the same amount.



Anyway, you have reminded me why I should continue with the liability
to/from transactions, at least for transactions not settled on the same
day.




-- 

Best Regards,
Tarlika Elisabeth Schmitz