Account List Column Headings

[Colin Scott]

Forgive me for butting in, but I had been considering reporting this as a bug anyway!

> All the columns were changed to always provide a recursive 
> summation. Do you need a non-summing column?  And if so, why?

I think this an example of "you can't win"!!!  :-)

The absence of a recursive sum was almost as much of a pain as is the absence of a simple one! 

I am Treasurer of my Rotary Club, using gnucash to maintain our accounts.  The Club maintains a charity bank account, which is sub-divided into a number of restricted "funds", which represent money raised and earmarked for a specific purpose by various committees within the Club.  Each fund is a notional sub-account, and because every committee Chairman wants to know the balance of "his account", each fund is represented in gnucash as an actual sub-account.

When we did not have a recursive sum, it was a pain trying to work out what the actual bank balance was, as one had to sum all the balances by hand to find out.  (Or run a report!  :-)

Now we do have a recursive sum, it is a pain finding the amount of "free" money - ie, money that is not a part of any of the restricted funds - in the bank, as I must sum all the sub-balances by hand and deduct the result from the top-level balance.  (Or run a report! :-)

The current situation is definitely an improvement on what went before, but it is still not optimal - I really need both (and I don't believe that I am by any means unique in this!  :-)

At present, the "Balance" and "Total" balance on the top-level account in the Accounts tab show the same values.  I would rather have expected the one to be the content of the top-level account - ie, the non-summed column, and the other (the "Total" column) to represent the recursive sum.  At present I don't see what the Total column is for.

Hope this is helpful!  

Regards,

Colin