[GNC] Transactions in Placeholder

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 4/29/2023 2:39 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:
> There's no hard rule either way. Some users feel strongly about not having any transactions in placeholder accounts, though, and advocate loudly on the list in support of it.  But there's nothing in the software preventing a placeholder account having transactions in it.
>
> That said, the importer really shouldn't put transactions into a placeholder, since the whole point of the placeholder designation is to prevent transactions from being put there. That sounds like a bug.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bug. Do we really need a prevent 
stupid mistake fence here? A hard fence? << a soft fence that can be 
enabled/disabled as a user option significantly more work >>

In the normal course of things, the logical INTENT of having a 
placeholder account is that it is an account concept (sort of account) 
that has a number of child  accounts dividing that concept up in finer 
detail. That said ....

Consider the work flow ... you are entering transactions and in that 
process find you have a number within that concept that do NOT properly 
fit any of the existing child accounts. Yes you can create accounts on 
the fly BUT you might immediately see that once you have created this 
new child or children, SOME of the transactions currently recorded in 
one or more of the preexisting children really should be moved to one of 
these new children.

In other words, you have work to do, and maybe in the middle of entering 
transactions not the best place to do that work. I, for one, do not want 
to ever interrupt the task of entering a stack of transactions because 
THAT is a possible source of error, one that gnucash or any other 
accounting app does not protect us from << getting wrong where we were 
when resuming entering that stack; do one twice or miss one >>

SO .... I like it that I could temporarily enter these transactions into 
the parent and leave the clean-up for a later time. The presence of 
transactions in the parent that is logically a placeholder serves as a 
reminder "you've got work to do here" << for THAT reason I would use the 
following work flow for that --- first create the new child/children, 
second move any in the preexisting children that better fit here, and 
only last distribute those in parent to the proper children. That way, 
if this task is interrupted, the transactions remaining in the parent 
serve to indicate "not done yet". And in exceptional situations maybe 
you want to leave an oddball transaction there  (in the parent) because 
you do not expect there to be others oddball in the same way.

So I would prefer using gnucash with the option "allow" (transactions in 
parent intended as a placeholder) trusting my good sense from keeping me 
from ACCIDENTALLY entering a transaction there.


Michael D Novack