[GNC] De-Reconciliation Settings

Geert Janssens geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be
Wed May 1 14:40:05 EDT 2019


Op woensdag 1 mei 2019 20:24:23 CEST schreef Adrien Monteleone:
> > Certainly, changing the account or amount will require a re-reconcile.
> > However, I would rather not have to re-reconcile for immaterial changes
> > to transaction date, transaction number, transaction description, or
> > split description.
> 
> If *you* know the change was immaterial, simply click the Reconcile button
> in the toolbar while *still* viewing the account, change the date to the
> end of the affected period, check off the one transaction and click the
> button to complete the reconciliation.
> 
> We had a thread a few months back about what really needs to trigger the
> clearing of the flag. I’m of the opinion that only date and amount matter,
> I can see that perhaps NUM *might* be wise to keep, but personally don’t
> use it as a transaction number often. Certainly, correcting a typo in
> Description, notes, memo splits, or any splits that don’t affect the
> current register, should not clear the flag.

Thanks for bringing that up. While I see the point, I am not fully convinced. 
Of course fixing a typo should not matter for reconciliation. But what if you 
accidentally change a description to something completely different (say you 
were confused and really wanted to change the transaction right above, a bad 
copy/paste, whatever human error you can think of, ...) and not immediately 
notice.

That means you now have changed the meaning of that transaction and it may be 
hard to find it back later in queries.

I believe the issue is there are several definitions of what reconciliation 
really is supposed to mean and hence what should or should not be protected.

For what it's worth all business accounting packages I have used in Belgium 
protect the full transaction once reconciled. There's not a single field I can 
still change.

I have no hard opinion on what is best or how to best tackle this to work for 
most people. Though I think getting a warning you're about to alter a 
reconciled transaction should not be that bad. It prevents accidental changes 
and still allows deliberate changes (which currently require a reconcile).

What we could perhaps do is this: keep the warning pretty strict, but only 
undo reconciliation if the change would alter the reconciliation balance 
(either a date change causes the transaction to fall outside of the 
reconciliation period is was in or the amount was changed). And document 
clearly what gnucash does.

> > It would seem the opinion here is whether "transaction description" (and
> > the others) is a material change.  It seems like that would be a good
> > choice for an option, maybe per-attribute (tran date, tran num, tran
> > desc, split num, split desc).
> 
> File an RFE on Bugzilla and/or contribute code to make it happen...

Preferably the latter...

Regards,

Geert




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