[GNC] Hidden accounts and balances

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Fri Aug 10 10:16:01 EDT 2018


> On Aug 10, 2018, at 8:43 AM, Bridgit Griffin <bridgitgriffin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> It’s a nice way to handle joint accounts that are no longer joint yet open.

If you control those funds, certainly you wouldn’t want to hide them.

If you don’t control the funds, as noted, you should zero and then hide the account as those aren’t your assets any longer.


> Also, for handling very old accounts not reconciled that are closed.

Reconcile the account, balance it out. Hide it. I created several Miscellaneous expense accounts, one of which is “Balancing” for just such a purpose where nothing else makes sense. (and yes, sometimes I credit Miscellaneous:Balancing, and sometimes I debit it depending on what needed to be done to bring the other account into balance)


> Plus
> during the import process from Quicken lots of transactions were removed
> from accounts.

If transactions were removed from accounts, the import is not yet complete or needs to be redone.

Without those transactions, the affected accounts are in error and won’t balance.


> For example, anything that says cash or salary. As you all
> know Quicken allows for categories that GNUcash makes into accounts.
> They're not really accounts so what is getting closed? It was a category in
> Quicken.

If non-accounts were created out of categories yet the transactions do properly exist where they belong, then delete the extra entries if not those entire accounts. They were never real and shouldn’t exist. Your books (especially your balance sheet and likely income statement) would be forever off otherwise because you’d effectively have duplicated transactions.

Regards,
Adrien
> 
> Why offer hidden when it's not?
> 
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 8:19 AM Maf. King <maf at chilwell.net> wrote:
> 
>> Sounds like a bug or mis-feature in quicken to me.  I think I'd prefer
>> that my
>> accounts package didn't hide money from me.
>> 
>> Seriously, though thinking about it for a second, what financial
>> institution
>> would allow you to close an account you held with them and leave a running
>> balance for the rest of eternity?  (apologies to those planning a meal at
>> the
>> Restaurant at the End of the Universe as featured in Hitchhikers Guide to
>> the
>> Galaxy)
>> 
>> If you're hiding an Income / Expense account then surely you don't want to
>> regard that money as no longer earned / spent? It would throw everything
>> out
>> of whack, IMHO.
>> 
>> 0.02
>> Maf.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Friday, 10 August 2018 14:11:15 BST Bridgit Griffin wrote:
>>> No not all have zero balances. However, Quicken allows the account to be
>>> treated as if that is the case. It seems the hidden function in GNUcash
>>> doesn't function the same way.
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Aug 10, 2018, 4:30 AM Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I would have expected a closed account to have a zero balance.
>>>> 
>>>> Colin
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 at 09:51, Bridgit Griffin <
>> bridgitgriffin at gmail.com>
>>>> 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> I recently imported 20 years of financial data. The issue I'm facing
>> is
>>>>> that marking an account as hidden doesn't remove the balance from the
>>>>> total of the higher level accounts. Such that only active (unhidden)
>>>>> accounts are reflected in totals. Being accustom to Quicken that did
>>>>> have this feature either through a close option or hiding the account
>>>>> removed any of the balances in those accounts from totals. I can't be
>>>>> the first person who has encountered this, but searching didn't
>> produce
>>>>> any relevant results. Any suggestions are welcome. Thank you.
>>>>> 
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>> 
>> --
>> Maf. King
>> PGP Key fingerprint = 8D68 A91F 733B 2C1F 43B7  2B7C E591 E8E1 0DE7 C542
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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