[GNC] New Imbalance-XXX Behavior

David T. sunfish62 at yahoo.com
Mon May 31 13:08:55 EDT 2021


@Derek:

Please re-read my email. In it you will see that I am NOT/NOT asking 
about how to handle entries that are automatically added to 
Imbalance-USD. I am fully aware of Gnucash behaviors in regard to the 
creation of entries into Imbalance-USD, and I have a long-established 
workflow in place for handling such created entries.


What I was noting is a CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR from earlier versions of 
Gnucash. In earlier versions, entries to Imbalance-USD would be added to 
the EXISTING Imbalance-USD account, regardless of its placement in the 
Chart of Accounts. In my books, I moved Imbalance-USD to be a child 
account of a new Top Level account that I created called "Special 
Accounts."


I have Used "Special Accounts" since around 2007 to encapsulate any and 
all "Imbalance-XXX" accounts, any "Orphaned Gains-XXX" accounts, any 
"Orphan-XXX" accounts (whatever they got created for), as well as my own 
"Unspecified" account (used on exceedingly rare occasions). This keeps 
the clutter down in the main Chart of Accounts. For the record, in each 
of these cases, I took the automatically-created account and MOVED it 
into its subsidiary location, a process I attempted with the 
GC4.5-vintage Imbalance-USD account without success.

In ALL prior versions (prior to 4.5), any imbalance entries would be 
added to "Special Accounts:Imbalance-USD", and I would periodically go 
through that account and clear up discrepancies. In GnuCash 4.5, these 
imbalance entries are ALWAYS placed in a top level account named 
"Imbalance-USD" regardless of the existence of "Special 
Accounts:Imbalance-USD".

@David:

Thank you for the vote of support.

On 5/31/2021 10:56 AM, David Carlson wrote:
> The Imbalance-xxx account will reappear the next time an error is made 
> in balancing a transaction, or if a transaction is intentionally left 
> out of balance to be fixed later, so it is useless to delete the account.
> I agree with David T that new entries should go to the existing 
> account, even if it is not in the default position in the CoA.
>
> On Mon, May 31, 2021 at 9:45 AM Derek Atkins <derek at ihtfp.com 
> <mailto:derek at ihtfp.com>> wrote:
>
>     The existence of an Imbalance account means you have an error in a
>     transaction.  So you should fix it and empty it..
>
>     -derek
>     Sent using my mobile device. Please excuse any typos.
>     On May 31, 2021 10:34:48 AM "D. via gnucash-user"
>     <gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>> wrote:
>
>     > Hello,
>     >
>     > I have noticed a new behavior in regards to the automatic
>     creation of
>     > entries to Imbalance-XXX (in my case,  Imbalance-USD).
>     >
>     > When I first started using Gnucash, I found the creation of a
>     top level
>     > imbalance account to be additional unwanted clutter to my Chart of
>     > Accounts. I found, by sheer coincidence, that I could move the
>     top level
>     > account into a different area of my CoA (in my case, a top level
>     > placeholder called Special Accounts, which includes a number of
>     these types
>     > of accounts), and Gnucash would use that newly-situated
>     Imbalance-XXX
>     > account for all new automatically-created imbalance entries.
>     >
>     > Alas, this is no more. In my most recent session, I have found
>     that Gnucash
>     > has decided that it must ALWAYS use a top level Imbalance
>     account for these
>     > entries. I find the concomitant clutter of my books annoying.
>     >
>     > This is disappointing. Does anyone know why this behavior has
>     changed, and
>     > is there any point to submitting a bug request to have the previous
>     > behavior restored?
>     >
>     > David T.
>     > Gnucash user since 2005
>     > Current: GC 4.5 on Windows 10
>     >
>     > ??
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> -- 
> David Carlson


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