[GNC] Changing the order of splits

[David Sumbler]

On Thu, 2021-07-29 at 18:11 +0100, Michael Hendry wrote:
> On 29 Jul 2021, at 11:53, David Sumbler <david at aeolia.co.uk> wrote:
> > I have a set of accounts in which some transactions have a
> > considerablenumber of splits, each one relating to an individual
> > person.  All ofthese splits have the same amount in the debit
> > column, but the numberof splits in each of these transactions
> > varies.
> > When I need to add a new transaction of this type, I duplicate
> > anearlier one.  I then edit the new one, editing and
> > adding/removingsplits as needed.
> > The trouble with this is that the order of the Account names in
> > thesplits ends up rather confused.  However, I can't find any way
> > of re-ordering them, which seems strange.  After all, some people
> > might wantthe Accounts to be in, say, alphabetical order.  That is
> > not myrequirement, but I would like some particular Accounts to
> > appearvertically adjacent to each other.
> > My question is, is there any way at all of moving splits up or
> > downwithin the list?
> > David
> 
> As treasurer of my Rotary Club I have a couple of similar problems to
> resolve.
> 1. Annual Subscriptions fall due on 1st July.
> 2. Members (and non-members) make donations during the year - mostly
> via various events the club runs - and I have to keep a track of
> these for Gift Aid purposes. The nominated destinations of these
> funds have to be recorded and reported on too.
> 1. Is relatively straightforward to manage, and has the bonus of
> keeping track of who hasn’t yet paid within Gnucash.
> On the first of July I created a payment of £0 from each member into
> our current bank account from our Members’ Subscriptions Income
> Account, with a member’s name in the Description field in Surname,
> Forename format.
> I then set up a Transaction Report for the Members’ Subscriptions
> Account, with a date range 1st June 2021 to 30th June 2022 (because
> there’s always someone who makes an early payment by online banking)
> sorted by date (primary key) and name (secondary key).
> As the subs were paid, I edited each member’s transaction to correct
> the date and amount paid. Reloading the transaction report now brings
> up a list highlighting those who haven’t yet paid in the 1st July
> slot
> 
> 2. Is more complex because I have to keep track of various categories
> of income. Income:Donations:GA (for Gift Aid) is the parent, with
> various children (Whisky Tasting, Foundation, Quiz, Water Account). I
> also chose to use the Memo field to record the donor’s name, with the
> source event in the Description field. This facilitates anonymous
> reporting to the club as opposed to the claim to HMRC for Gift Aid,
> which obviously requires the donors’ details.
> In this case the primary key is the Memo field and the secondary is
> by register order.
> 
> I don’t think I’ve got any transactions with additional splits, but I
> believe these should be reported correctly by the above Transaction
> Report method.
> I’m not sure how your payments arise - if you’re receiving a fixed
> sum each month from a variable (but finite) number of individuals, it
> might be worth setting up a Scheduled transaction for all and
> deleting the unnecessary ones.
> Hope this helps, and happy to correspond off-list if that helps
> Michael

Thanks, Michael, for your helpful reply.  True, it doesn't answer my
question "is there any way at all of moving splits up or down?"  But
if, as I strongly suspect, the answer is "no", a work-around is
obviously needed.

I hadn't thought of using scheduled transactions in the way that you
suggest, but I think that this is probably a good way to go.

This particular set of accounts is for a weekly online bridge session.
 I collect the money from the players, and pay the monthly dues to the
provider of the online service.  Some players, though not all, have
regular bridge partners, and it is convenient to keep their names
together.  But even they will have occasions when their partner is
unavailable and so they end up playing with somebody else.

So I think that I need to set up a single weekly scheduled transaction,
with splits for everyone who ever plays.  Additional names can be added
as and when new players join us.
Thanks again for your suggestion.

David