[GNC] GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide - account names

Bruce Irving bruce at brmw.com
Sat Jun 19 00:54:03 EDT 2021


The GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide looks to be inconsistent regarding
account names.

On page 33 (of the PDF), under GnuCash Accounts it says:
    'A GnuCash account must have a unique name (that you assign) ...'

But, in fact GnuCash does allow duplicate account names provided they have
different parents. And, I found multiple examples of such
duplicate account names within the same document (pages 122/123 and Figures
13.26, 13.27).

Perhaps the 'unique name' referenced in the documentation is intended to
refer to the full path,
e.g. 'Assets:Bank ABC:CD' vs 'Income:Interest Income:CD'. But that wording
seems inconsistent with the GnuCash UI. In the dialog used to create or
edit accounts you must specify an 'Account name' (CD) and the 'Parent
Account' (Assets:Bank ABC), and that 'Account name' need not be unique.

Am I misunderstanding this?
If not, then I think the documentation should be modified to remove the
statement:
    'A GnuCash account must have a unique name ...'
Or perhaps to clarify the wording.

Thanks,
Bruce Irving


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