[GNC] Order of transactions

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Fri Mar 8 14:41:40 EST 2019


I didn’t mean to still be able to sort by the real transaction number, but if you have one, and you’ve repurposed the NUM field, you’ll likely want a place to put it just for reference. I simply offered an overview of the remaining options. Overloading NUM as a time field is pretty much giving up on using it to hold a real transaction number. (though one user piped in they used a yyyy.nnnn format that seems to work, though I don’t see how with the intervening “.”)

The ideal would be to edit the time portion of the transaction's entry but of course, that means more code and maintenance for a non-widespread use case. The occurrence of negative balances is rare unless you extensively use a cash account (where it is impossible in the real world) or you frequently have just the right types of transactions in some other asset so that the GnuCash ordering produces this condition.

Regards,
Adrien


> On Mar 8, 2019, at 8:54 AM, Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com> wrote:
> 
> Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> writes:
> 
>> Yes, that is why I was explaining the abuse of the NUM field as a time
>> field for sorting and how to do it in a way that works. If you are
>> doing this, (or instead using 1,2,3,4 ) *and* you want to keep track
>> of a transaction number, then you’ll have to put it somewhere else so
>> you can still sort that transaction in the order you want. One obvious
>> choice for an alternative would be the Action field for that
>> particular split line. Another would be the Note field. (especially if
>> the Action field is also otherwise utilized) Another option would be
>> the Memo field for the split.
> 
> Yes, if you want to order your transactions in a specific order but then
> also be able to sort by a transaction number then yes, you would need to
> do what you suggest and put the default-sort-order into Num, and the
> transaction number into another field.
> 
> But why would you want to do that?
> 
> You could still SEARCH for transaction number even if you overload num
> with <sortNum>.<TxnNum>.  But yes, you couldn't sort on the <TxnNum>
> portion -- I just don't see the use case for that.
> 
> *shrugs*
> 
>> Regards,
>> Adrien
> 
>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
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> 
> -derek
> 
> -- 
>       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
>       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
>       Computer and Internet Security Consultant
> 




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