Invoices/Bills

[tereque]

hi Derek,

On 18/07/2012 22:13, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
>
> tereque <tereque at gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>>>>> How do I cancel/delete the duplicated invoice, so that it doesn't show up in
>>>>>>> the reports.
>>> This is in the FAQ:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#Q:_How_can_I_delete_an_Invoice.2C_Customer.2C_Vendor.2C_or_Employee.3F
>>
>> trying to understand ... why would you not let these items be
>> deletable? what is the idea behind such a restriction?
>>  ...
>> ... If you can not get rid of it anymore it seems weird somehow and you might think that
>> this is a software error.
>
> It's not implemented because the logic to determine that it's safe to do
> is... hard.  There are so many interconnections between Invoices, Bills,
> line-items, Tax Tables, etc that making sure it's safe to delete an
> invoice without leaving dangling references was just ...  a lot of work.
> Work that I personally didn't want to do, and nobody else has come along
> with a way to do it securely.

thanks for the explanation. I totally agree that it might be something 
about setting your priorities on where to put your workforce.
>
> Patches are, of course, always welcome.  But be warned, it's not a
> simple task.  Which is why it was never implemented, and why we have the
> "active" flag as a way to remove items from searches.
>
> I'm sorry you don't like it.  You're welcome to help fix it.

I really would if I could. But being not able to do anything apart from 
using a computer (and maybe administer some basic tasks) I have 
certainly no capabilities to help more actively. I was just trying to 
figure out whether there is some sense behind this. And not having found 
the workforce to implement this feature + having a workable solution 
("active" flag) is totally making sense.

what I think as a user what would make sense is to have an explanation 
in the manual about this. I figure many people would look for this and 
being left without it = being left confused. Maybe that's a field where 
somebody like me could actually contribute ... will try to figure out 
how that works