[GNC] Imbalance Records with zero amounts

[David Carlson]

Paul,

I have never had a zero value imbalance line fail to disappear when I
edited any transaction.  Granted, I never intentionally tried various
sequences of edits to see if I could make one stick, since it was always my
goal to balance the transaction so that I could save it and go on to the
next edit.  However, I also did not have a favorite procedure of editing
debits or credits first.  Sometimes entering a description in a split line
intentionally brings along an account name and value from a previous edit
in that account.  That might temporarily create an imbalance that might
stay for a while before I get the transaction balanced.  If a nonzero
imbalance does exist, another edit to effectively create an offsetting
imbalance is all that is required to make both of the imbalances
disappear.  I have never worried about values because GnuCash always sorts
left side first then zero value splits next and right side splits last.

Sorry to ramble but I just never noticed anything weird about imbalances in
many years of experience with them.  They just came and went as I was
completing transaction edits.  I would estimate that more than 60 percent
of my transactions have three or more split lines too.

On Wed, Jun 26, 2024 at 10:41 PM Paul Kroitor <paul at kroitor.ca> wrote:

> David, if we are both using 5.6 in Windows but have different behaviours,
> then I expect either our settings or our procedures are different.
> 1. Are you using auto-split as a register default?
> 2. My issue appears when I edit only a previously saved transaction. In
> auto-split, one must do this it two steps, the debit side, and then the
> credit side.
>
> Update:
> Procedure to create a zero imbalance:
> - (in auto-split) edit the first (debit) amount, press ENTER: Imbalance
> split is created (NB: the account field in the split actually says
> "Imbalance").
> - edit second (credit) amount, Press ENTER. Imbalance changes to 0.
> - Press ENTER again, cursor moves to next transaction.
> - Go back to prior transaction, and zero imbalance is still there.
>
> Procedure to NOT create a zero imbalance:
> - exactly as above only use down arrow (or left mouse click) to navigate
> between lines.
>
> Note that in this second case, there is an imbalance amount line created
> but it created in bottom line of the group *without* "Imbalance" in the
> account field.
>
> Paul
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+paul=kroitor.ca at gnucash.org> On
> Behalf Of Paul Kroitor
> Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2024 11:08 PM
> To: 'David Carlson' <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: [GNC] Imbalance Records with zero amounts
>
> I am using 5.6 here (on Windows), but I’m pretty sure this behaviour has
> been around for as long as I can remember (and I started on 2.6).
>
>
>
> However, in playing around trying to document the exact steps to recreate
> the issue, it seems to me that it’s changed in that it’s more pervasive
> than before.
>
>
>
> It used to be that some edits of existing transactions would create a
> temporary Imbalance split as the last split, and those ones would disappear
> once the transaction was saved. But other edits would create the temporary
> Imbalance split in between the debit and credit entries, and those would
> stick around.
>
>
>
> However, I now cannot edit any existing transaction amounts without a zero
> Imbalance split sticking around.
>
>
>
> Note that I always work in auto-split registers, so when a transaction
> must be corrected, I change the debit side, which of course creates an
> imbalance line. I then change the credit side, which eliminates the
> imbalance (it becomes zero) but the split line stays in the register (in
> every test I do now, apparently). Something has definitely changed, because
> it wasn’t this bad before.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2024 10:39 PM
> To: paul at kroitor.ca
> Cc: stan+gc at fastmail.fm; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: [GNC] Imbalance Records with zero amounts
>
>
>
> Nobody is revealing which version they are using.  In older versions, ie
> before 5.something,   imbalance entries of 0 automatically disappeared when
> a transaction was saved.  I think it is a bug if they are now being saved.
> They are disappearing in my copy of release 5.6 in windows.
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2024, 9:14 PM Paul Kroitor <paul at kroitor.ca <mailto:
> paul at kroitor.ca> > wrote:
>
> I get one of these empty (zero amount) splits every time I have to change
> both sides of an already entered transaction in a register set to
> auto-split.
>
> Oddly, if the transaction shows the credit first, the imbalance gets
> created (temporarily non-zero) as the last split and, once the imbalance
> line shows zero and is deleted when the transaction is saved.
>
> But if the transaction shows the debit first, the imbalance line appears
> in the middle, and even after it reverts to an imbalance of zero and is
> saved, the zero imbalance line stays in the register.
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> > On Jun 26, 2024, at 9:55 PM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) <
> stan+gc at fastmail.fm <mailto:stan%2Bgc at fastmail.fm> > wrote:
> >
> > To be clear, you're talking about accidentally hitting the enter key
> > instead of the Tab key when moving between fields, right?
> >
> > Stan Brown
> > Tehachapi, CA, USA
> > https://BrownMath.com
> >
> >> On 2024-06-26 17:04, Jim DeLaHunt wrote:
> >>
> >> As you know, double-entry bookkeeping requires every transaction to
> >> be balanced, that is, to have its credits equal its debits. GnuCash
> >> enforces this requirement, but only when it saves a transaction, not
> >> while you are actively entering or editing the transaction. But, it
> >> is possible to tell GnuCash to save a transaction when you don't mean
> >> to, while you think you are still doing data entry.
> >
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-- 
David Carlson