[GNC] Order of accounts when closing the book

[Fred Bone]

On 10 June 2025 at 11:41, Michael or Penny Novack said:

> On 6/10/2025 12:36 AM, Stan Brown (using GC 4.14) wrote:
> > The Close the Book tool generates two transactions, one for all income
> > accounts and the other for all expense accounts. The accounts are not in
> > alphabetical order in either transaction, nor are they in Account Code
> > order, nor arranged by the values of the splits.
> >
> > They _seem_ random, but I can't imagine they really are. Can anyone tell
> > me (a) how they're actually sorted, and (b) how I can get them in
> > Account Code order?
> 
> If you are really doing a "close the books" << close the "temporary*
> accounts of types income and expense" into equity it could be done three
> ways:
> 
> a) In a single transaction.
> 
> b) In two transactions, one for the income accounts and one for the 
> expense accounts.
> 
> c) Separate transactions for each income and expense account.
> 
> These are logical equivalents. So you appear to be asking, "were I using
> method "c" am I forced to do them in some specified work flow order?" You
> are of course asking about "b" but what meaning are you attaching to
> order?

No, he's asking about the built-in tool, which uses what you label method 
(b), and trying to determine what governs the order in which the splits 
(one per Income/Expense account) get listed when viewed, and whether he 
can influence it.

FWIW, what I see appears to be
- alphabetical order among the accounts that were created by the "new 
book wizard" (or whatever it was called)
- creation date order among those I added later
If I'm right, then this is likely to be the order in which they appear in 
the data file. In which case, it may be possible to modify it by editing 
the data file to re-shuffle the accounts in the desired order; this 
would, of course, have to be re-done any time the Account Code hierarchy 
was modified.