[GNC] Reconcile also opens Interest Payment box?

[Dale Alspach]

I use the interest pop-up on one account but could easily do without it. I
do use credit card payment after reconciliation on several accounts and
like it. If the feature disappeared, it would not be a big deal. I know
nothing about the actual code, but would it be simpler to skip the pop-up
window and automatically directly create a register transaction for the
payment?
The pop-up window already makes use of memorized transactions and is
basically just a different look for creating a transaction.
In more detail:
There is a user preference checkbox as to whether a payment will be
automatically created.
At the completion of the credit card account reconciliation, if the
preference is active, the reconcile window closes and a register
transaction appears which is partially completed as follows.
Date: Today
Description: [Account Name] payment
Debit: [Reconcile Account] statement balance
Credit: [Empty] statement balance
Focus lands on Description with transaction in "split" mode or double
line/journal mode (if default). (Perhaps with description entry highlighted
so that "delete" erases entry.)
The user then finishes the transaction.

My guess is that typically the user pays from the same account every time.
The typical user would hit delete, start typing the memorized description,
that and the credit account would be automatically created. The user would
need to adjust the date and payment amount.

One general comment on discussions like this.
Currently all of the comments are about the programming. What is not being
considered is making the product attractive to users and in particular to
users who are migrating from commercial products such as Quickbooks. Those
products are loaded with user friendly features such as interest and
payment pop-ups.

Dale

On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 11:42 AM John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

> Frank and I have both opined on
> https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797854 that the whole interest
> payment as part of reconciling is stupid. I want to add to that opinion
> that so is the payment transfer that optionally pops up when one finishes
> reconciling a credit card account. It's a lot of program complexity that
> relieves the user of very little work indeed: Those interest and payment
> transactions can just as easily--maybe more easily--be created in the
> register before and after reconciling, and in the case of interest they're
> an obvious candidate for a scheduled transaction.
>
> But that's a UI change and UI changes tend to generate heated
> disagreement. I want to get that out of the way up front: Who here objects
> to removing the interest and payment transfer automatic popups and the
> interest payment button on the reconcile info dialog, and what compelling
> reason do you have for objecting?
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>
> > On Jul 10, 2020, at 6:59 PM, Adrien Monteleone <
> adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks Jean,
> >
> > I filed bug: https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797854 for the
> issue with the global preference not being honored.
> >
> > And bug: https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797855 for the button
> issue on the two dialogs.
> >
> > Feel free to combine them if you like. I wasn't sure of developers'
> intent with the global preference, so I filed them separately.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Adrien
> >
> > On 7/10/20 5:52 PM, Jean Laroche wrote:
> >> If you open a bug about it, I can try to fix that (move things to the
> right place etc). At the very least, the global option should be either
> fixed, or removed.
> >> Jean
> >> On 7/10/20 3:35 PM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> >>> For consistency, that very wide button should probably either be
> changed to a checkbox, then moved or copied to the Account Edit page as a
> per-account preference. (it could remain in the dialog for discoverability
> I suppose, which is what I mean by 'copied') One could change it in either
> place, but ideally, it should be in one place.
> >>>
> >>> I'm not sure a global preference (especially one that is ignored) is
> necessary if each account can be set separately.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>> Adrien
> >>>
> >>> On 7/10/20 5:16 PM, lj wrote:
> >>>> I figured it out. Duh.
> >>>>
> >>>> There is a button on the Reconcile dialog that says "Enter Interest
> Payment". In addition to letting you enter an interest payment, clicking
> that button sets a per-account flag to always prompt for an interest
> payment when you reconcile.
> >>>>
> >>>> On the Interest Payment dialog, there is a button "No Auto Interest
> Payments for this Account". (It's very wide, and I didn't realize it was a
> button.) That cancels the dialog, and also clears the per-account flag so
> GnuCash will no longer prompt for interest payment when you reconcile.
> >>>>
> >>>> And the global preference Register, Reconciling, Automatic interest
> transfer? It does NOTHING at all. It sets a preference flag which is never
> used. It's supposed to be the default for accounts without the
> auto-interest-payment flag, but it doesn't work. Note that in
> libgnucash/engine/Account.cpp, the function
> xaccAccountGetAutoInterestXfer() ignores its default_value argument.
> >>>
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