Re: [GNC] Should GNUCash allow a split to reference the same account twice

[R. Victor Klassen]

Just to add one more instance, the business features, regularly do this, when 
entering a bill or invoice.  

10 items on an invoice/bill could correspond to as many as 10 different 
income/expense accounts, or as few as one.  Once the transaction has been 
posted, (one transaction per invoice/bill), you can look it up and find one 
split per line item, and these may all be to the same account, or not, 
depending on whether they should.

> On Jul 20, 2023, at 2:35 PM, David Carlson  
> wrote:
> 
> Yes.  I do it monthly in some accounts where I make a minimum payment on a
> loan and separately add an additional amount.
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 1:18 PM Henry Law  wrote:
> 
>> Earlier today my wife was running GNUCash to update "her" bit of the
>> accounts and got into a serious tangle because she (inadvertently)
>> changed a newly-imported transaction so that its two splits -- which
>> should have been our current account and her credit card account --
>> both referred to the credit card account.  She then reconciled one half
>> and not the other, which caused a cascade of issues which took me
>> several hours and a manual edit to the GNUCash file to fix.
>> 
>> Should GNUCash refuse to allow a transaction to have two splits into
>> the same account?  My knowledge of accounting is scant, but with it I
>> can't see why one would ever legitimately do that.
>> 
>> --
>> --
>> Henry Lawn e w s @ l a w s h o u s e . o r g
>> Manchester, England
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Re: [GNC] "Comparative" reports?

[Simon Roberts]

>
>
>
> From: Michael or Penny Novack 
>

Thanks, I can see a custom built "paper" report having merit. I think the
accountant is comparing with "that evil program" which allows side by side
"live" reports that they can click-to-dive in.


> --
>
> From: NoobAlice 
>
[...]

> In GnuCash 5.1 (not sure when feature first showed up, but I think it
> was recent), you can do this for nice divisions such as year, half-year,
> quarter, month, 2-weeks, and week.
>
> Reports > Income & Expense > Income Statement (Multicolumn)
> or
> Reports > Assets & Liabilities > Balance Sheet (Multicolumn)
>
> In Options > top tab General, choose Period Duration of how you want the
> info split, then choose start and end dates appropriately.
>

Wonderful thank you. All the more reason for me to upgrade. I'd been
putting it off on the "it's fine as it is" basis, but this sounds like a
good trigger.

[...]

> --
>
> Message: 9



> From: Adrien Monteleone 
>
[...]

> In addition to the new multi-column ability of some reports as NoobAlice
> pointed out, you can also run old-school 'Custom Multi Column' reports
> which lets you put multiple reports into 'one'. You can of course
> further manipulate this in a spreadhsheet app as Michael noted.
>
[...]
Aha, also helpful to know, thank you Adrien

Much appreciate everyone's input :)
Cheers,
Simon

-- 
Simon Roberts
(303) 249 3613
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Re: [GNC] Should GNUCash allow a split to reference the same account twice

[Stan Brown]

On 2023-07-20 10:46, Henry Law wrote:
> Should GNUCash refuse to allow a transaction to have two splits into
> the same account?  My knowledge of accounting is scant, but with it I
> can't see why one would ever legitimately do that.

Here's a recent example where _three_ splits in a transaction referenced
the same account. I paid for my groceries with a credit card, then
before leaving the register I noticed that the cashier had rung up my
two $0.49 bunches of scallions as $1.99 "Mexican onions". You'd think
she would apologize and hand me the $3.00 difference in cash, or at
least just credit my card the $3.00. No, she insisted on crediting the
$3.98 mischarge, then running a new charge of the correct $0.98. The
whole operation took upwards of ten minutes, and she apparently felt no
apology was needed for her mistake and the wasted time.

When I got home I entered the transaction like this:
Debit:  Groceries $100.98
Credit: AP CapitalOne Visa $103.98
Debit:  AP CapitalOne Visa $3.98
Credit: AP CapitalOne Visa $0.98
with suitable notes in the memo lines. Since there would be three lines
on my next statement, I needed three splits in GC.

(The other groceries didn't cost $100, but I use that number to make the
transaction clearer for this note.)

BTW, a split _does_ reference only one account. I think you meant to say
"a transaction" rather than "a split" in your subject line.

Stan Brown
Tehachapi, CA, USA
https://BrownMath.com
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Re: [GNC] Reconciliation Dates

[Gyle McCollam]

John,
Only because when I see an old date, I think I missed reconciling the account 
and I'm OCD enough that I want the date to be current.  Just to show how OCD I 
am, I created a new parent placeholder account and moved the subaccounts, then 
I deleted the original parent placeholder account.  Now it doesn't have a 
reconciliation date to bother me.


Thank You,

Gyle McCollam

Gyle McCollam

gmccol...@live.com   email


From: john 
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 1:00 PM
To: Gyle McCollam 
Cc: gnucash-user@gnucash.org 
Subject: Re: [GNC] Reconciliation Dates



> On Jul 20, 2023, at 08:03, Gyle McCollam  wrote:
>
> Is there a way to delete the reconciliation date from accounts you no longer 
> wish to reconcile?
>

Not in the UI or even the API. Why would you care that there's a reconciliation 
date on the account?

Regards,
John Ralls
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Re: [GNC] "Mod" field in GNUCash log file

[Henry Law]

On Thu, 2023-07-20 at 13:26 -0700, John Ralls wrote:
> There's some documentation at
> https://code.gnucash.org/docs/MASTER/group__TransLog.html.

Thanks.  I knew it would be somewhere!

-- 
-- 
Henry Lawn e w s @ l a w s h o u s e . o r g
Manchester, England            
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Re: [GNC] Should GNUCash allow a split to reference the same account twice

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 20, 2023, at 10:46 AM, Henry Law  wrote:
> 
> Earlier today my wife was running GNUCash to update "her" bit of the
> accounts and got into a serious tangle because she (inadvertently)
> changed a newly-imported transaction so that its two splits -- which
> should have been our current account and her credit card account --
> both referred to the credit card account.  She then reconciled one half
> and not the other, which caused a cascade of issues which took me
> several hours and a manual edit to the GNUCash file to fix.

That's too bad. The transaction should have been readily apparent in both the 
credit card register and in the reconcile window because it would appear twice 
in both once with a debit and once with a credit: One doesn't usually have 
debits in a credit card account so that's an obvious red flag.  The register 
would also show the credit card account in the transfer account column, another 
easily-spotted red flag. The fix is to simply change that to the current 
account; GnuCash would I think ask you if you really want to change a 
reconciled transaction, to which you'd reply that you would, and once you had 
finished with it you'd re-do the reconcile.

> 
> Should GNUCash refuse to allow a transaction to have two splits into
> the same account?  My knowledge of accounting is scant, but with it I
> can't see why one would ever legitimately do that.
> 

It's normal in GnuCash to book both the sale and capital gains of a security or 
foreign currency asset in the same transaction by having two splits to the 
stock account.

Regards,
John Ralls

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Re: [GNC] "Mod" field in GNUCash log file

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 20, 2023, at 7:56 AM, Henry Law  wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to sort out a baffling data problem with GNUCash and I'm
> looking at the logs.  
> 
> I can get most of it, thanks to the column name record at the start,
> but
> 
>   1. What do '=START" and "=END" signify? 
>   2. What is the "mod" field (field #1); I see values of 'B', 'C', and
>  'D' but can't deduce what they mean.
> 

They're not actually meant to be human readable.

START and END delimit a single transaction edit; each line reflects the state 
of the transaction in that edit. 'B' lines reflect the state at the beginning 
of the edit, as to 'D' (for delete) and 'R' (for rollback). 'C' is for commit 
and the data in a C line is the new state of the transaction once it's 
committed.

There's some documentation at 
https://code.gnucash.org/docs/MASTER/group__TransLog.html.

Regards,
John Ralls

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Re: [GNC] Income Statement versus Transaction Report

[John Ralls]

See https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797796. It has a long and detailed 
discussion about handling foreign-currency investments. CDB-Man is a licensed 
accountant practicing in Vancouver, BC.

My take-away from that discussion is that GnuCash has painted itself into a 
corner by not enforcing the home-currency rules, particularly for Equity 
accounts, that CDB-Man explains there. Without that discipline it's very 
difficult to reconstruct the correct home-currency amounts to report, including 
especially the capital gains and losses from the foreign currency piece of the 
equation.

Unfortunately I also think that imposing those restrictions in a future version 
of GnuCash would create discontent that would make the recent complaints about 
quickfill seem like meek acceptance. In any case it's not on the agenda to do 
so. Users who have multiple-currency books will have to go learn the rules and 
impose the discipline on themselves; if they do so I'm reasonably sure that the 
Average Cost price source will then give correct and consistent (instead of the 
current merely consistent) results.

The PriceDB-based price sources can't, nor are they intended to, give correct 
results. They're what-if tools, as in "How much money in currency X would I 
have if I sold all of my investments and converted all of my cash to currency X 
today?". It's fun to do but not particularly meaningful.

Regards,
John Ralls




> On Jul 20, 2023, at 10:24 AM, Adrien Monteleone 
>  wrote:
> 
> Ah. Interesting conundrum.
> 
> Many moons ago that there was issue with some of the code for the various 
> price options in reports. I don't recall the details, but I seem to remember 
> that 'average' was thought to be the most accurate at the time, and there was 
> discussion of removing the other options until they could be fixed/improved.
> 
> I'm not sure what progress has been made in that regard since.
> 
> In the meantime, I wonder what happens if you created additional splits (or 
> separate transactions) between the two currencies - say from a USD income to 
> a COP asset, with the accounts used just for reporting purposes. I would 
> think you'd get your trading splits in that case, and can specify the proper 
> FX. Then you'd have fixed transactions for the report which wouldn't need 
> price conversion at all, since they would be in the transaction itself.
> 
> Of course, with the extra accounts, you'd need to exclude them from other 
> reports like a Balance Sheet.
> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
> 
> On 7/20/23 12:11 AM, Fred Tydeman wrote:
>> I have Trading turned on.
>> The income accounts in question are using COP as their currency.
>> Transactions in those accounts do not show any splits for Trading.
>> Income in those accounts is coming from an Asset account that also is in
>> COP.
>> So, there is no conversion between COP and USD involved in that transaction.
> 
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Re: [GNC] Should GNUCash allow a split to reference the same account twice

[David T. via gnucash-user]

There are many situations where that can legitimately happen-- for example, 
when you have two charges contributing to a particular total (think of a 
paycheck with income from base salary and income from bonuses). Your want to 
see each listed separately, even though they combine to one final figure. 

And yes, it can be confusing. I have found that changing the register view to 
Transaction View can simplify things by showing each transaction as a single 
entity, with each entry split showing as part of the whole. 

⁣David T. ​

On Jul 20, 2023, 9:19 PM, at 9:19 PM, Henry Law  wrote:
>Earlier today my wife was running GNUCash to update "her" bit of the
>accounts and got into a serious tangle because she (inadvertently)
>changed a newly-imported transaction so that its two splits -- which
>should have been our current account and her credit card account --
>both referred to the credit card account.  She then reconciled one half
>and not the other, which caused a cascade of issues which took me
>several hours and a manual edit to the GNUCash file to fix.
>
>Should GNUCash refuse to allow a transaction to have two splits into
>the same account?  My knowledge of accounting is scant, but with it I
>can't see why one would ever legitimately do that.
>
>-- 
>-- 
>Henry Lawn e w s @ l a w s h o u s e . o r g
>Manchester, England            
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Re: [GNC] Should GNUCash allow a split to reference the same account twice

[David Carlson]

Yes.  I do it monthly in some accounts where I make a minimum payment on a
loan and separately add an additional amount.



On Thu, Jul 20, 2023, 1:18 PM Henry Law  wrote:

> Earlier today my wife was running GNUCash to update "her" bit of the
> accounts and got into a serious tangle because she (inadvertently)
> changed a newly-imported transaction so that its two splits -- which
> should have been our current account and her credit card account --
> both referred to the credit card account.  She then reconciled one half
> and not the other, which caused a cascade of issues which took me
> several hours and a manual edit to the GNUCash file to fix.
>
> Should GNUCash refuse to allow a transaction to have two splits into
> the same account?  My knowledge of accounting is scant, but with it I
> can't see why one would ever legitimately do that.
>
> --
> --
> Henry Lawn e w s @ l a w s h o u s e . o r g
> Manchester, England
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[GNC] "Mod" field in GNUCash log file

[Henry Law]

I'm trying to sort out a baffling data problem with GNUCash and I'm
looking at the logs.  

I can get most of it, thanks to the column name record at the start,
but

   1. What do '=START" and "=END" signify? 
   2. What is the "mod" field (field #1); I see values of 'B', 'C', and
  'D' but can't deduce what they mean.

[GNUCash 4.8 on Linux Mint 21.]

-- 
-- 
Henry Lawn e w s @ l a w s h o u s e . o r g
Manchester, England            
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[GNC] Should GNUCash allow a split to reference the same account twice

[Henry Law]

Earlier today my wife was running GNUCash to update "her" bit of the
accounts and got into a serious tangle because she (inadvertently)
changed a newly-imported transaction so that its two splits -- which
should have been our current account and her credit card account --
both referred to the credit card account.  She then reconciled one half
and not the other, which caused a cascade of issues which took me
several hours and a manual edit to the GNUCash file to fix.

Should GNUCash refuse to allow a transaction to have two splits into
the same account?  My knowledge of accounting is scant, but with it I
can't see why one would ever legitimately do that.

-- 
-- 
Henry Lawn e w s @ l a w s h o u s e . o r g
Manchester, England            
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Re: [GNC] Income Statement versus Transaction Report

[Adrien Monteleone]

Ah. Interesting conundrum.

Many moons ago that there was issue with some of the code for the 
various price options in reports. I don't recall the details, but I seem 
to remember that 'average' was thought to be the most accurate at the 
time, and there was discussion of removing the other options until they 
could be fixed/improved.


I'm not sure what progress has been made in that regard since.

In the meantime, I wonder what happens if you created additional splits 
(or separate transactions) between the two currencies - say from a USD 
income to a COP asset, with the accounts used just for reporting 
purposes. I would think you'd get your trading splits in that case, and 
can specify the proper FX. Then you'd have fixed transactions for the 
report which wouldn't need price conversion at all, since they would be 
in the transaction itself.


Of course, with the extra accounts, you'd need to exclude them from 
other reports like a Balance Sheet.


Regards,
Adrien

On 7/20/23 12:11 AM, Fred Tydeman wrote:

I have Trading turned on.

The income accounts in question are using COP as their currency.
Transactions in those accounts do not show any splits for Trading.

Income in those accounts is coming from an Asset account that also is in
COP.

So, there is no conversion between COP and USD involved in that transaction.


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Re: [GNC] Reconciliation Dates

[john]

> On Jul 20, 2023, at 08:03, Gyle McCollam  wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to delete the reconciliation date from accounts you no longer 
> wish to reconcile?
> 

Not in the UI or even the API. Why would you care that there's a reconciliation 
date on the account?

Regards,
John Ralls
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[GNC] Reconciliation Dates

[Gyle McCollam]

Is there a way to delete the reconciliation date from accounts you no longer 
wish to reconcile?


Thank You,

Gyle McCollam

Gyle McCollam

gmccol...@live.com   email
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