Tax tables list in bill entry

[Shane Litherland]

Hi Geert and list,

I'll follow that up on bug reports.

I've noticed something else about that field, when I let auto-fill from
the description field complete a split for me, with a description that I
haven't used in ages. Since the last time I used them, I changed my tax
tables a bit.

I used to have one tax table 'GST' that posted to one liability acct
'GST'. tax rec'd was credit/owing, tax paid was debit/rebate
Then I got fancy,and broke up my tax accts (to have 'capital',
'non-capital', 'tax-free', 'tax received').

I made new tax rules for most of these. Seemed though that I couldn't
delete the original tax rule 'GST' whilst some historical records used
it... to cut down on some non-essential steps I just changed the acct
that went with that rule, used it as the 'tax rec'd' option.

When I rearranged tax things, I naturally reshuffled everything in the
GST acct to the relevant children accts and then the original GST acct
became the placeholder essentially. so nothing in there, and nothing
more to post there.

Odd thing though, when the auto-fill has filled out an BILL(expense)
split for me using a description for the first time since that
reshuffle, the tax table it auto-fills is 'GST'... the table/acct that
would have been used last time, the rule of which now points to
'received'.
But of course since then I'd moved the actual txn out of the 'GST' acct.
The current location of any txn that matches the auto-filled
description, is now in an expense GST account which relates to the rules
for 'capital', 'non-capital', 'tax-free' depending on the item.

So somewhere in there, it appears what GNUcash is remembering for the
last used tax-table for any given description, is not the last-used tax
account as such but the last-used rule. The process does not seem to
have any 'backwards-update' to let this autofill know if the final acct
where the auto-filled txn now resides has changed since auto-fill
'remembered' the earlier txn.

In other words, the auto-fill process is not retrieving information
about splits that match that description from the accounts ledgers as
such (or at least, not as far as the GST table field is concerned).
Is it retrieving it from some list of 'postings' or such? something
hidden from the user that has remembered/recorded descriptions and
associated details as they were last posted?

I don't think this is an error or bug. I think I understand the logic of
it, how the tax-table rules are in some ways independent of the accounts
they point to. I note it mainly as observations that could help others
figure out how/why the 'duplicate tables' issue is arising, or maybe to
at least rule out possible sources of the problem.
Then again, this scenario may not really be relevant to the tax-table
duplicate, but more to do with the autofill? 

-shane.

 it seems to On Mon, 2012-01-30 at 18:38 +0100, Geert Janssens wrote:
> Op zaterdag 28 januari 2012 19:19:37 schreef Shane Litherland:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > had success doing a 'manual' upgrade/install of gnucash 2.4.9
> > (previously on 2.4.7 from getdeb) (on ubuntu 64bit 10.04)
> > 
> > involved a bit of adding packages to finally get there but nothing too
> > difficult :-)
> > 
> > A little thing I've noticed:
> > 
> > upon opening a 'new bill', for the first entry in the bill the drop-down
> > list for the tax table field seems to show all available tax tables
> > duplicated. After committing the first row (i.e. Enter), the drop-down
> > list for that first entry and subsequent entries only shows each tax
> > table once.
> > 
> > Strange... is it something that should be put in a bug report (can do
> > that if wanted)?
> > 
> Please do. I have seen this happen also from time to time, but I don't know 
> what causes it.
> 
> Geert