"correcting" transactions

R. Victor Klassen rvklassen at gmail.com
Fri Feb 21 10:01:04 EST 2014


Just to throw one other perspective into the list, the current discussion has strayed into the realm of what can and cannot be traced/changed and why one can never really make a transaction truly “read only”.

Thirty years ago it was “well known” (but not necessarily widely acknowledged) that the reasons for protection (passwords, file permissions, etc. ) were, in order 1) to help keep users from shooting themselves in the foot; 2) to protect users from other users trying to be helpful but actually shooting them in the foot; and 3) to protect against malicious users.

Too often we think only of case 3) without considering case 1).

I would love the ability to set a date range read only - with the ability to over-write the read-only nature of the transaction with a warning.   That way if I accidentally enter a transaction with an unreasonable date (and I got to choose what was reasonable) I would be warned, and avoid having to search for a transaction because it disappeared to some date I didn’t intend.   I really don’t care that I could override the read-only nature of the date range.  Or that I could edit an XML file directly, or any of that.  Where only one or two people - that trust each other fully on the finances of this business - ever interact with GNUcash, it’s not fraud we’re worried about, it’s correcting mistakes - and better still avoiding them.

Now as far as modifying transactions go - in a real corporate production system I might have to enter balancing transactions every time I need to correct something, but in GNUcash I can find the original transaction or invoice and correct the error.   Yesterday I changed some account names when I was reviewing last year’s records.  No amounts or dates changed, but some income was better categorized after this.  Remember, we’re not pros (mostly), so we make mistakes, or even change our minds from time to time.   The other month I had to change an amount on a transaction when there had been a typo in transcribing it from a handwritten cheque to GNUcash, and on reconciliation it became clear that the reason it was a few cents of balancing was in a transcription error.   I really like being able to go back and correct things when they are wrong, rather than having to put in correcting transactions.   And this is really OK for the sole proprietorship.

And finally, the posting date defaults to when I do the data entry.  On a cash based accounting system if I post invoices and bills when the money changes hands I would get the reports to look right, but invoices would not have invoice numbers, since they need to be posted before being printed or they say “invoice in progress” where the number should be.   Because of the way GnuCash treats posting dates, on an accrual based system, they should be posted on the date the invoice is effective - when the goods change hands, or the invoice is written - or the date the bill has on it, in the case of bills received.   And the default will be wrong, so if I forget to change that before posting I need to be able to go back and fix it.  Which is why it’s nice to be able to fix it.




More information about the gnucash-user mailing list