[GNC] WHY ARE THERE "IMBALANCE ENTRIES" AT ALL ?? JUST CURIOUS

[David Cousens]

John,

Actually you are given the opportunity to fix it during entry. When the
Imbalance account appears in a transaction in the account column, all you have
to do is click on it in the Account column and assign the correct account from
the drop down list, before closing (pressing Enter) the transaction.

In two split transactions GnuCash will assign the amount of the entry in the
first split to the second split automatically and if you select a valid transfer
account no imbalance will occur. If you don't select a valid account or alter
the amount when creating a transaction with 3 or more splits, the imbalance can
be created.

As Michael indicated the other common scenario is when the target account does
not exist and has not been created before entry.
David Cousens
(yet another David)

On Tue, 2021-06-01 at 11:07 -0400, John Morris wrote:
> Given the extremely long history of this question with many good people
> expressing good reasons on both sides of the debate, I would have expected the
> developers to give the user the choice. There should be a switch in the
> preferences that allows the user to decide if the necessary extra accounts
> will be created as needed to address an imbalance or the user will be forced
> to correct the imbalance before completing the transaction. Personally, I
> would choose the latter, but I am not allowed that freedom with GnuCash.
> 
> John
> 
> > The question about imbalance entries goes back a long ways in GnuCash, and
> > you can find discussions about it in the lists over the years.
> > 
> > Essentially, the debate boils down to this: is it better to allow a user to
> > enter an imbalanced transaction and automatically create the balancing entry
> > in a dummy account (Imbalance-XXX generically speaking), or should the
> > program nag the user to balance the transaction every time? Gnucash choose
> > the former many years ago, and has stuck with that model since.
> > 
> > David
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