I guess it's partly a philosophical issue.
My view is that splits exist (in Gnucash and in general) primarily to
distinguish different elements in an accounting entry that need to be
treated differently and not as a form of memo or detail kept for a record.
I use them a lot, and frequently with multiple splits against the same
counter-account.
For example, in one complicated estate I am the executor of there was a
long delay in setting up the estate's bank account and as a result I
found myself paying numerous items pending the estate being able to pay
for itself. To this end, I might pay a caretaker's invoice for three
buildings. The payment transaction in my GC bank account gets separated
in three splits, one for each building, but each split goes against the
same "Paid for Estate" account. Necessary so that the eventual recharge
to the Estate clearly shows the different charges for the three
buildings. Note that the change requested by the OP would break this (or
at least would if it was changed to merge these splits as Quicken used to).
I realize this is long baked-in behaviour of the basic logic and
changing it would be a big discussion, but I just wanted to make it
clear that I at least depend on the status quo for my daily workflow.
Finding a different register view that doesn't exhibit the presentation
the OP mentions is a good work-around.
Paul
On 2025-08-24 9:41 a.m., sunfish62--- via gnucash-user wrote:
Tom,
As I understand it, the register is built technically to display *splits* for
an account, rather than *transactions.* A change of the type you're requesting
would entail a fundamental rewrite of the core application. That won't happen.
It would be prudent to look for another way to accomplish your purpose. I would
ask why you need to track costs at such a high level of detail?
David T.
On Aug 24, 2025, 3:03 AM, at 3:03 AM, Tom Route-36 <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi David's (C and T),
Thanks for both your inputs on this, and your detailed explanations and
testing. I do appreciate it. I think I'll have to agree that the most
practical fix for me at this point is to just set my default view to
Transaction Journal. I'm not really thrilled with that as a solution,
having to scroll thru those long detailed split transactions; but at
least with the Transaction Journal view I'll be back to having just one
single transaction in the other account rather than all those multiple
transactions, which gets really confusing really fast.
Separately though, I think I'll also try reporting this as a kind-of-a
bug -- at least in the way that the info is being displayed to the
user.
Perhaps if it's not considered a true bug, maybe the developers could
consider the issue an enhancement or feature request. Using the
Transaction Journal mode would actually be okay; but it would be nice
if
the user had the OPTION to view the registers in that mode with each
transaction COLLAPSED INTO A SINGLE LINE, at least in the way that it's
displayed.
Anyway, thanks again for your feedback and help.
Tom
On 8/23/2025 8:54 PM, David Cousens wrote:
David T,
I had realized that was the case. I setup a test transaction with 2-3
entries and verified that what Tom was seeing happened as he had
described it. It is not a bug in the sense that the recorded
information is incorrect, more that it maybe could be clearer.
On Sat, 2025-08-23 at 22:00 -0400, [email protected] wrote:
David C.,
He is seeing 17 transactions in Groceries because he's entered 17
separate splits for the Groceries account. As you note, if he were
to
change to Transaction Journal mode, he wouldn't see it as 17
entries,
but one multi split transaction.
Tom, that's your fix. GnuCash has always rendered splits this way,
and I don't expect that will change any time soon. So, set your
default view to Transaction Journal, or settle for entering less
detail into GnuCash generally.
David T.
On Aug 23, 2025, at 9:50 PM, David Cousens
<[email protected]>
wrote:
Tom
This is an artefact of the View mode selectable with the View-
(Basic
Ledger, Auto-Split Transaction, Transaction Journal) menu item
while
the register is selected (also Edit->Preferences->Regiter Default
settings).
In Transaction Journal mode the transaction is displayed as a
single
transaction with the splits as you would expect.
In Basic Ledger mode, and Auto-Split mode only a single line is
displayed for the transaction. At present to show all the entries
to
that account, GnuCash does not display the sum of all splits
against
that line for the transaction but displays each split as though it
were
a separate transaction and similarly in the Auto-Split ledger mode
where you will notice that the total for each split as a single
line is
only the value of the split.
When you open the transaction in Auto-Split mode you will see that
the
transaction total now displays as the sum of the splits and each
split
is listed. You can open the transaction from any of the single line
displays of the splits, but it is the same transaction being opened
from any of the splits belonging to that transaction, so the
transaction is not recorded multiple times although it may appear
to
be.
It may be possible that this could be fixed to display the total of
the
transaction splits in the Basic Ledger mode and Auto-Split in
single
line mode and not display the individual splits on separate lines
and
similarly in the Auto-Split mode.
If you report this as a bug (see
https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Bugzilla
) there is a much higher chance of it being addressed by one of the
developers, however it may also be a result of the way the
underlying
GTK library used for the GnuCash register display works in which
case
it may be much harder to program to do this as you would like. That
is
a likely explanation for the way it is currently working.
On Sat, 2025-08-23 at 18:27 -0600, Tom Route-36 wrote:
Hi all,
I'm still new and learning my way around GnuCash; but I'm
noticing an
annoying behavior. When I record a transaction I put a LOT of
detail
into the recording of that transaction. For example, let's say
I
bought
a large quantity of groceries at a particular grocery store and
charged
it to a credit card. For the example here, let's say it was 17
grocery
items on a single credit card transaction, and the total charge
came
to
$136.00.
When I record this $136.00 transaction in GnuCash, the credit
card
account will have a single transaction consisting of 17 splits,
where
each split documents the description (in each Memo field) and
the
cost
of each of those 17 items. And all 17 split items get recorded
into
my
Expenses:Groceries account.
In the credit card account all looks normal the way I expect it
to
be.
It's a single transaction with 17 SPLITS, each split going to
the
Expenses:Groceries account. But when I jump to the
Expenses:Groceries
account, there I see 17 SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL TRANSACTIONS -- all
with
the
same date, and all with the identical set of 17 splits. The
only
thing
different among these 17 separate transactions is that the
Expense
column amount of each transaction shows the amount of each
individual
split line entry. That is not at all what I expect.
What I would expect to see in the Expenses:Groceries account is
also
a
SINGLE transaction, just like I entered in the credit card
account.
And
I would expect that that single transaction would have 17 splits
in
it
documenting each of the 17 grocery items and amounts the same as
it
appears in my credit card account. Why is that not happening?
And
is
there some setting or option in GnuCash to change that behavior?
Tom
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