[GNC] WHY ARE THERE "IMBALANCE ENTRIES" AT ALL ?? JUST CURIOUS

John Morris johnjeff at editide.us
Tue Jun 1 11:07:38 EDT 2021


Given the extremely long history of this question with many good people expressing good reasons on both sides of the debate, I would have expected the developers to give the user the choice. There should be a switch in the preferences that allows the user to decide if the necessary extra accounts will be created as needed to address an imbalance or the user will be forced to correct the imbalance before completing the transaction. Personally, I would choose the latter, but I am not allowed that freedom with GnuCash.

John

> The question about imbalance entries goes back a long ways in GnuCash, and you can find discussions about it in the lists over the years.
> 
> Essentially, the debate boils down to this: is it better to allow a user to enter an imbalanced transaction and automatically create the balancing entry in a dummy account (Imbalance-XXX generically speaking), or should the program nag the user to balance the transaction every time? Gnucash choose the former many years ago, and has stuck with that model since.
> 
> David


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