[GNC] Fwd: The two modules

[Geert Janssens]

Op donderdag 28 juni 2018 18:47:18 CEST schreef Stephen M. Butler:
> On 06/27/2018 04:41 PM, DaveC49 wrote:
> > An active non-placeholder account should not have child/subaccounts,
> > although I don't think GnuCash actually prevents this. In this case, the
> > parent account total is the sum of the child subaccount totals plus the
> > sum
> > of any transactions into the parent account itself. This will make a
> > report
> > look to be incorrect as the sum of transactions into the parent account is
> > not presented separately and its total will not be the sum of the child
> > account totals. I can't think of a use case where this would be desirable,
> > but some people may be happy with that behavior. I don't think this
> > behavior has changed since I first checked it out in an earlier version
> > (around 2.2 I think).
> 
> This is a problem.  In a good report the parent with transactions should
> show a line for the parent so that the column total for that parent (on
> the balance sheet) is correct.
> 
This seems to make most sense to me:
If a parent has transactions put it twice:
Once as aggregate account and once as an account on it's own. That would meet 
both needs. The aggregate will total it's own transactions with those of its 
child accounts. Or put differently the aggregate account would treat itself as 
a child account.

> At least, as a former IT software development manager, I would insist
> that a column total show all of it's inputs. 
> 
> Maybe the financial folks can band together to get the developers to
> enforce no-transactions to a parent account.

I think we should modify the concepts. "Placeholder" is ambiguous and for the 
lack of a better solution is has been abused to make existing accounts read-
only.

Perhaps it's time to introduce a "View" type account which is only used to 
structure the account tree (and as aggregate account in reports) and next to 
that introduce a read-only attribute to normal accounts. Placeholder could 
then be phased out in favor of these two. We could even try to automate this 
using some heuristics:
- if a placeholder account has no transactions, convert it into a view account
- if a placeholder account does have transactions, make it read-only instead.
Add in an informational message to the user about what was done so the user 
can make corrections if needed (like adding view accounts if an account was 
being used for both functions).

Geert