[GNC] Imbalance Records with zero amounts

David Carlson david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
Thu Jun 27 03:06:04 EDT 2024


Well, Apparently I lied.  I just jumped to Imbalance-USD from a transaction
that I wasn't done editing and I found some old or incredibly old
transactions with zero valued splits.  However, they all had content in the
description field which was serving as an anchor to prevent the
disappearance, usually where I accidentally failed to use my special
account for comments.

On Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 1:46 AM David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>


-- 
David Carlson


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