[GNC] Confusing and inconsistent headers in transaction entry and report forms

[davidcousens49 at gmail.com]

Peter

The terms Increase and Decrease in the header only apply to the account whose
register you have open not to the accounts which are the target of the
individual split(entry) of the transaction and not to the account which is
designated in the second split. It would appear that you have the register for
your checking account open and a debit entry is an Increase in that.  If there
was a credit split/entry to your checking account it would appear in the
decrease column. The second line of the transaction is the corresponding credit
entry to the revenue account. This is why we accountants find the headers
Increase/Decrease confusing. 

You are not making entries in a "transaction entry" window in GnuCash but you
are performing the transaction entry directly into the register for that account
itself. 

David Cousens

On Mon, 2022-08-01 at 17:13 -0400, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
> Hi, I'm using Gnucash 4.11 on MacOS 11.6.8.
> 
> There are two images attached, labeled Transaction entry and Transaction
> report. They are two different views of the same transaction, to a non
> profit that I am doing the books for.
> 
> The transaction involves a deposit to our checking account from Wepay. It's
> a donation, which we account for under Revenue:Donations, which increases
> with a Credit, and the bank account will increase with a Debit, so this
> should be properly balanced.
> 
> However, from the Transaction-entry screen shot, where the column labels
> are Increase and Decrease, I have to enter the Donation as a Decrease in
> order to make the Donation record increase. This is bizarre, is it not?
> 
> You can see in the same image that the checking balance goes up. so it
> seems to be properly recorded as a debit; in addition, though not shown,
> the sum of Donations does goes up, which seems contrary to having to enter
> it as a Decrease.
> 
> Now look at the second screenshot, the Transaction-report view for this
> transaction. What is especially strange here is that the labels of the
> Debit and Credit columns are exactly reversed. It says that the Checking
> side of the transaction is a Credit and the Donation side is a Debit, which
> is exactly backwards.
> 
> Any insight, including any aspect due to my own foolishness and/or
> inexperience, would be appreciated.
> 
> -P.
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