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

[John Morris]

Hi David,
> I agree. There is a case for not displaying the Imbalance accounts in the CoA tab if there are no entries to them, i.e. they are zero balance. This is an option in reports but not in the account tab. They can of course be left in the CoA and hidden in the Account tab by editing the account and setting the hidden flag but they then remain hidden even when new entries to them are created.

  Yes, that is a large part of my complaint. Certainly, hiding the empty accounts would be an improvement since there is currently no developer time available to implement the full solution (a preference to stop the user in their tracks before the imbalanced transaction is finalized).

> I would go further and hide them totally if the balance in them was zero and change either the background or the font color to a bright red or even flashing red( that would clearly need to be optional) to  highlight them when they are present with a non-zero balance.

  Yes, anything to draw the user’s attention to their presence would be helpful.

> Their usefulness to indicate incorrect entries would be enhanced if they are hidden when the balance is zero as their presence whether highlighted or not indicates an error.  Similarly with the orphan transactions created when an account with existing transactions to it has been deleted without moving the transactions to another account.

  Yes.

> I would take a look at it but I am currently heavily involved in a physics project programming exercise at the moment. The change in behaviour from the previous version probably needs to be tracked down and, where possible fixed first, before adding any further enhancements to minimize conflicting changes.

  I understand being too busy to take on new projects. I also agree that fixing the more immediate and more significant problems in GnuCash is much more important the niceties of how the imbalanced transactions are handled.

Best,
John

> On Jun 1, 2021, at 6:46 PM, David Cousens <davidcousens49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> John,
> 
> I agree. There is a case for not displaying the Imbalance accounts in the CoA
> tab if there are no entries to them, i.e. they are zero balance. This is an
> option in reports but not in the account tab. They can of course be left in the
> CoA and hidden in the Account tab by editing the account and setting the hidden
> flag but they then remain hidden even when new entries to them are created.
> 
> I would go further and hide them totally if the balance in them was zero and
> change either the background or the font color to a bright red or even flashing
> red( that would clearly need to be optional) to  highlight them when they are
> present with a non-zero balance. 
> 
> Their usefulness to indicate incorrect entries would be enhanced if they are
> hidden when the balance is zero as their presence whether highlighted or not
> indicates an error.  Similarly with the orphan transactions created when an
> account with existing transactions to it has been deleted without moving the
> transactions to another account.
> 
> I would take a look at it but I am currently heavily involved in a physics
> project programming exercise at the moment. The change in behaviour from the
> previous version probably needs to be tracked down and, where possible fixed
> first, before adding any further enhancements to minimize conflicting changes.
> 
> David Cousens