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

[David Cousens]

David,
You have to look at the use cases of a wide range of users Some may have
multiple vehicle and want to track expenses separately for each vehicle for
example. being able to name the accounts the same for each vehicleis a great
benefit They would want be be able to create 2 or more subaccounts named fuel
each undera placeholder for the specific vehicle. Some may have accounts tagged
with a customer's name. Having to have unique names for each account at the leaf
level would likely create difficulties across the board. The path down the
account tree gives you the necessary  level of visual uniqeness and the GUID
assigned to each account is unique so there is no problem with uniquely
identifying a special account.

 What is necessary to implement what David T desires and what appears to have
been the default behaviouris for there to be a pointer to the unique guid of the
imbalance account for each currency in use stored when it is first created and
if GnuCash requires an Imbalance account it searches those pointers before
creating a new one. That way it doesnt matter where the account sits in the  CoA
heirarchy (accounts are not stored internally in a tree structure but are just a
serial linked  lists of data objects with parent and child pointers) so it can
be moved around with impunity and because there is a special pointer to its
guid, located quickly without a tree search.

Since it appears to have been introducedin the changes from 4.4 to 4.5 it should
not be too hard to track down. It is most likely introduced when changes were
made to the code for an unrelated reason. I think David T raised a bug report
and if not he should as that will put it on the radar to be looked at. The
discussion here is useful though as it highlights that a lot of us use Gnucash
in sometimes subtly different ways and sometimes not so subtly different ways
and it gives whoever does the programming information which can help to keep
GnuCash flexible

At the moment, I simply do as Michael Hendry suggested and delete the Imbalance
accounts once I have fixed any problems when they do occur. My accounts in
retirement are pretty simple though and I don't have a large number of errors.

On Wed, 2021-06-02 at 16:05 -0500, David Carlson wrote:
> Since you bring up the concept of reserved names, perhaps any account name
> that Gnucash creates probably should be a reserved name so the entire
> argument about creating accounts with the same name should be moot.  Then
> the previous behavior of allowing it to be moved would not be an issue.
> 
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 3:56 PM David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > As David pointed out in his very first post of the other thread. GnuCash
> > has removed an existing function without warning.  Some of us use it and
> > want it back.
> > 
> > On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 3:40 PM Michael or Penny Novack <
> > stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > On 6/2/2021 2:27 PM, D. via gnucash-user wrote:
> > > > The discussion about the location of Imbalance-XXX accounts is under a
> > > different thread, and I explained there my reasons for my account
> > > structure
> > > and Gnucash's previous implementation. Suffice to say that I'd rather keep
> > > Imbalance-USD around (since it will get created all over again), but put
> > > it
> > > in the location of MY choosing.
> > > 
> > > The "location" of an account is, in effect, part of its name, its full
> > > name. You could have half a dozen accounts with the "name" Imbalance as
> > > long as each was a different leaf of the tree (location in the CoA). How
> > > do you propose gnucash to "know" WHICH of these you intend to be used as
> > > the account to use for imbalance situations?
> > > 
> > > What you are asking form in effect, is the ability to specify an account
> > > to be used for the purpose.
> > > 
> > > I know you are thinking, just look for a leaf with name Imbalance. That
> > > could work IF gnucash reserved the name, disallowed you creating an
> > > account with that name. Account names in gnucash do NOT have to be
> > > unique/distinct.  Is it the case that in your own books you do not have
> > > accounts with the same "name" but different leaves of the tree so you
> > > don't see the problem. The developers put Imbalance at the top level of
> > > the tree precisely because that would be unique (could only be one).
> > > 
> > > Michael D Novack
> > > 
> > > 
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> > 
> > --
> > David Carlson
> > 
> 
>