Some questions (i.e. temporary entries)

[Geert Janssens]

On Tuesday 19 October 2010, Paul Schwartz wrote:
> --- On Mon, 10/18/10, Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com> 
wrote:
> > From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>
> > Subject: Re: Some questions (i.e. temporary entries)
> > To: "Paul Schwartz" <pmjs1115 at yahoo.com>
> > Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, "Harry" <hvb.box at gmail.com>
> > Date: Monday, October 18, 2010, 2:32 PM
> >
> > > Gnucash is a great program for personal use. It is
> >
> > pretty easy to use, but it is not for people worried about
> > controls and audits. It just doesn't have any control/audit
> > features that traditional accounting/bookkeeping has.
> >
> > > HTH
> > >
> > > Paul
> > > 
> >
> > Easy to fix runs counter to "good practice" in bookkeeping.
> > So yes, you can edit entries, but "proper practice" is to
> > offset them by a correction entry so that an audit trail
> > remains.
> >
> > If using GnuCash for more formal purposes you can get some
> > of the "can't change" effect by burning copies of the file
> > (and a copy could be handed off out of your personal
> > control). That's what I do for the organizations for which I
> > am using GnuCash to keep their books.
> >
> > Michael
> 
> I agree with you. It's just so easy to make changes without good practice,
>  it eventually "sucks you in". Also, I think that the lack of "Journal
>  Entry" report makes it very difficult to keep track of what has been done.
> 
> Paul
> 
There is indeed no enforced system that prevents you from changing past 
entries. You can however use the reconcile option to prevent you from 
accidentally changing past entries though. If you try to modify a reconciled 
transaction (split to be exact), GnuCash will warn you and asks your 
permission to continue.
As said, this won't enforce good practice, but it can encourage it.

About the "Journal Entry" report, I think you can almost get there by tweaking 
the options of a transaction report: select all accounts and sub accounts, 
choose the information you wish to display, and sort on register order. The 
only information missing would be the date the transactions were entered (as 
opposed to the date of the transaction). It should give a fairly good overview 
of what has been done though.

Geert