On 15 Nov 1999 15:40:23 EST, the world broke into rejoicing as
Derek Atkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
(Message inbox:46)
Rob Browning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Not necessarily. The organizational schemes that I think the current
>> setup has in mind look more like this:
>>
>> Income
>> Salary
>> Consulting
>> Foo
>> Bar
>> Taxes
>> FICA
>> Capital
>> Expenses
>> Food
>> Rent
>> ...
>>
>> This is the functional structure, and this way the account totals mean
>> something. What you're talking about is just a visual structure, and
>> perhaps it should be supported in the GUI, but I'm not sure it should
>> be part of the engine.
>>
>> (Of course I'm very far from a financial expert.)
>
>Still, what does it mean to have a transaction in "Taxes", or
>"Income"? Transactions really should be in the leaf nodes, like
>"Salary" or "FICA". It's the same thing as I propose, just different
>names on the folders (parent accounts). It doesn't matter what the
>organization is (or the account names), I still maintain that
>transactions should only be in leaf nodes, and that 'folders' should
>be the summation of it's children, but should never have transactions
>itself. If it turns out that you do not have a leaf account to handle
>the particular item, then maybe you should have a 'misc' account.
The "formal" term (as much as it's formal) for this is that you have
some accounts that are "roll-up" accounts, which exist to combine the
data in their children.
>Unfortunately there is no way to enforce this behavior (either in the
>GUI or the Engine).
The data structures at present do not support it; I *would* favor
supporting this, so that users could pick some accounts as being purely
summary/roll-up accounts, and put a flag on such accounts.
>FYI, I have a format like:
> Assets
> USTrust
> Checking
> Savings
> Vanguard
> ...
> E*Trade
> ...
>
>It really is the same thing.
Yes, indeed.
I have a counterexample, of sorts:
Auto
Repairs
Fuel
where I'd prefer to have 'em all allow transactions. Of course, the
rule of "top level forbids transactions" *does* work, as the structure
really is:
Expenses
Auto
Repairs
Fuel
But, by the same token, the "Top Level Doesn't Transact" *breaks* on
your "not-at-the-root" accounts "US-Trust" and "Vanguard."
Based on these examples, the appropriate thing is for the control
to be on an account-by-account basis.
--
"Are [Linux users] lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of
reliable, well-engineered commercial software?" -- Matt Welsh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
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