[GNC] Possible regression in 5.12: Invoice displays two extra decimal places in Unit Price column

[John W. O'Brien]

On 2025-06-30 22:33, John W. O'Brien wrote:
> On 2025-06-30 20:39, John Ralls wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Jun 30, 2025, at 16:16, John W. O'Brien via gnucash-user <gnucash- 
>>> user at gnucash.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2025-06-30 19:02, John W. O'Brien wrote:
>>>> Greetings friends,
>>>> My thanks to everybody who worked on the latest release.
>>>> I _just_ upgraded GnuCash to 5.12 (on macOS Sonoma 14.7.6, M3) and 
>>>> my second task was to generate a new invoice. The Unit Price column 
>>>> now shows up with four decimal places (e.g. "$100.0000") instead of 
>>>> two ("$100.00"). The Quantity and Total columns are unaffected. This 
>>>> is with the Fancy Invoice stylesheet to which I have applied non- 
>>>> default settings. Invoices that existed prior to the upgrade, posted 
>>>> or not, exhibit the same behavior.
>>>> This initial message is from immediately after noticing this change, 
>>>> and is intended mainly for broader awareness so others will be on 
>>>> the look- out for this. I intend to dig into my settings and read 
>>>> the release notes more closely to see if this is a "me" problem. 
>>>> Please feel free to point me in the right direction in the mean 
>>>> time, if you know more than I do. If I cannot solve this on my own, 
>>>> I will be glad to prepare a ticket.
>>>
>>> There appears to be a relevant entry [0] in the 5.12 release notes:
>>>
>>>     Bug 799602 - Unit Price on Invoice will NOT display as decimals
>>>
>>> Based on what little I grasped from a quick review of that bug, I 
>>> changes Preferences > Numbers, Date, Time: "Force Prices to display 
>>> as decimals." to ticked, verified that "Decimal places" is set to 
>>> "2", applied, and restarted the app. No change. The invoice still 
>>> displays with four decimal places.
>>>
>>> [0] https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=799602
>>
>> It’s a non-problem. That’s the way GnuCash is supposed to display 
>> prices when force-to-decimal is enabled, with two more decimal places 
>> than the currency. When force-to-decimal is off prices will display as 
>> fractions if they can’t be presented exactly as a decimal.
>>
>> The Decimal places field in Preferences>Numbers, Date, Time is for how 
>> many decimal places to insert with the automatic decimal point 
>> feature. It has no effect on the display of numbers.
> 
> 
> Thank you for that explanation. I'm not sure I understand it fully, but 
> at least I grasp that the "Decimal places" setting is irrelevant to this 
> display anomaly that is new for me in 5.12.
> 
> If I want the old display behavior back, where all currency columns in 
> the Fancy Invoice report render precision to USD pennies ($0.01), no 
> more and no less, what should I try adjusting next? That is, I have no 
> need to display prices with more than penny precision, and doing so 
> unnecessarily is likely to cause confusion among my customers.

There's either something I'm still not getting or there is a new bug. I 
cannot figure out any way to get the unit price column to display as I 
expect on an invoice.

I started with a fresh install of 5.12-2 (macOS ARM) after renaming 
~/Library/Application Support/GnuCash so that I would get default 
settings. I made a new file with all defaults. I made an invoice with 
three line items with unit prices 1, 10, and 100. In the "View Invoice" 
display, these values are rendered with two decimal places, which is 
what I expect. In each of the four invoice reports (Easy, Fancy, 
Printable, Tax) the same values are rendered with four decimal places. 
None of the other currency fields have this problem. I confirmed that 
"Force Prices to display as decimals" is un-ticked. If I understand your 
explanation correctly, this should be the "force-to-decimal is off" and 
_can_ be presented exactly as a decimal scenario. These values can be 
displayed exactly with zero decimal places. I would settle for two.

What am I missing?