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

[D.]

Of course, you can suppress zero balance accounts in the View menu, if that's your preference...


-------- Original Message --------
From: David Cousens <davidcousens49 at gmail.com>
Sent: Tue Jun 01 18:46:57 EDT 2021
To: John Morris <johnjeff at editide.us>, Gnucash Users <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] WHY ARE THERE "IMBALANCE ENTRIES" AT ALL ?? JUST CURIOUS

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

On Tue, 2021-06-01 at 18:10 -0400, John Morris wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Unfortunately, by then the damage is already done. The Imbalance account has
> been created and I must go and delete it yet again. I don’t like extra
> accounts cluttering up my carefully designed CoA.
> 
> Best,
> John
> 
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