Transaction Entry Dates

[John Ralls]

On Jul 20, 2014, at 12:09 PM, jcard21 xxxxxxx <jcard21+gnucash at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 6:30 AM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:
>> It has been a long-standing and often discussed problem that transaction entry dates can change with time zone, and https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=137017 has many useful comments on the subject. But today I discovered https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=89439 with an alternative view, that Date Entered should be Time Entered, and that there should be an optional column in the register to show the time. That suggests an alternative solution to the problem while adding a sorting option for transactions.
>> 
>> I've created two "suggestions" on UserVoice. Please vote for the one you prefer:
>> 
>> https://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/suggestions/6194177-add-an-optional-entry-time-field-to-the
>> https://gnucash.uservoice.com/forums/101223-feature-request/suggestions/6194125-fix-the-moving-entry-date-problem-by-getting-rid-o
>> 
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
> 
> When entering a txn, why not just default to the local (pc) date and
> time, and allow the user to edit it?

Why not make that the default? Because of Bug 137017: It would still have the potential for changing when the user changes timezones. We could lock it to the timezone, but that would cause problems when users edit the book from different timezones. Converting the date/time to Z would keep them in the right sequence.

> Some txns I'd like to be the current date/time, but others I'd like to
> change backwards either the date and/or the time.

There are probably cases where you want to move it forward in Date/Time; I have transactions like that where I schedule an automatic bill payment close to the due date.

The real question, though, is would you really find it useful to have an entry time as well as the date?

Regards,
John Ralls