[GNC] De-Reconciliation Settings

[Adrien Monteleone]

> On May 1, 2019, at 1:40 PM, Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 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.

Even on paper, I was taught to do all accounting in ink and make correcting entries to fix errors. No editing or erasing was allowed.

A strict implementation of this would be possible since GnuCash already has the ‘reverse transaction’ feature, but I doubt many would be happy with that move.

If this were a corporate accounting package, that would probably be a necessity. (and likely address, though not solve, many questions of ’security’ some people have from time to time on the list - hey, look, another option!)


> 
> 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.

Not sure which would be easier, fire the warning on one set of criteria, but only clear the flag based on a subset, or fire the warning for everything, but only clear the flag if there is a boolean option in the dialog set to do so. (checked by default, or implemented as action buttons)

I would think the latter would involve less code, or at least less testing of criteria, thus a little cheaper. (I’m aware things that look cheap for code, aren’t always, but it sure looks that way abstractly to me for now) Do you have to test the transaction data against the criteria twice? Or just once and store the results temporarily to make the decision to clear flags? (and then read that stored data, trash it and clean up)

Regards,
Adrien