[GNC] Change account type by editing XML?

[david whiting]

On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 at 19:59, Adrien Monteleone
<adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:

[snip]

> Are you experiencing some problems with GnuCash with the current setup? If the reporting otherwise works, it may not be strictly necessary to change it. If you aren’t using the business features at all, I don’t see why the member accounts can’t stay where they are even as 'type' A/R.

I'm using the business features for our bills and have issued a few
invoices to some customers, e.g. some sponsors ask for an invoice. The
main problem I have is that accounts with type RECEIVABLE can't be
selected as an Expense Account when entering invoices; perhaps I
shouldn't even be trying to use an Asset account here, but as well as
handling subs for members I also need to handle 'fines' (misconduct
charges and admin fees) that are levied by the county football
association whenever a player is given a yellow or red card. The club
is invoiced and pays these fines, and then we get the player to
reimburse the club. I enter the invoices from the county FA into
gnucash and want to be able to assign them to the appropriate club
member account. As I can't do this using the invoice dialogue I have
created a spreadsheet for these bills that I then import. This method
allows me to assign the fines to one of the accounts that has type
RECEIVABLE. (You could argue that if it is not possible to do this
through the dialogue then it shouldn't be possible through the
import.) So importing this spreadsheet works, but it means extra work.

> On the editing front, have you tried doing a test edit of the account type to see if something breaks? (on a copy of the file of course)
>

Yes, I have done that and run a few key reports on the before and
after versions and I get the same results, so, fingers-crossed, I
think it has worked OK.

Thanks for your help and that of others who have replied.

David