For the transfer account, the second account in a transaction being imported, GnuCash does in fact work that way, i.e. it imports all transactions in which the transfer account has not been specified to an Imbalance account for the currency of the primary account in the transaction. The presence of transactions in the Imbalance accounts is intended to trigger users that the transaction description is incomplete and that the correct account should be selected to replace the Imbalance account for the transaction. In the majority of cases the transfer account is going to be an Income or Expense account. Where a transfer account is specified though, the label has to have been previously mapped onto an internal account or a new internal account created and specified for it to be imported. The transaction record to be imported must specify a primary account label which is usually an asset or liability account and that label has to be mapped to an internal asset/liability account otherwise it does not know where to import it to.
You could have an option whereby if a matching account label does not exist for the primary account for a transaction, GnuCash creates an account with the name. In the majority of cases for imported transactions, the primary account is going to be an asset or liability account. However, account structures in accounting have a structure which reflects how the business (even where it is simply personal accounting) operates and is financed and the asset and liability account structures are fairly strictly defined by the assets and liabilities you actually have. I would not want to have myaccounting program randomly creating new accounts in these categories every time it came across a label which had not been assigned to an existing internal account and I suspect that after experiencing it you may not either. A first time user new to accounting is always going to have trouble working out what goes where and why which is why the GnuCash guide has a very brief introduction to accounting basics but nothing really replaces making mistakes. Unfortunately most of us don't consult the documentation until we strike a problem, me included. The beauty of GnuCash is that if you do stuff it up you can at least correct it once your knowledge has built up. ----- David Cousens -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
