[GNC] Fwd: The two modules

[David Carlson]

Is the 'frozen' status which is already in place but seemingly unused
supposed to be for this purpose?

David C

On Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 12:31 PM John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jun 28, 2018, at 10:10 AM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be>
> wrote:
> >
> > 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.
>
> +1
>
> >
> >> 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).
> >
>
> I propose that we combine “placeholder” and “hidden” to “inactive” which
> removes an account from the picker list and from the Accounts page unless
> “show inactive accounts” is selected from the filter.
>
> While marking an account “placeholder” prevents adding transactions to it,
> there’s no requirement in GnuCash that an account with children have the
> placeholder flag set. To strictly follow David Cousen’s advice we’d have to
> impose that restriction, but some users might find that a bit drastic.
> Perhaps we could make it a book option?
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>
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