On Sat, 2007-09-22 at 16:19 -0700, Ross Boylan wrote: > Since submitting the bug and follow-up I decided the safest thing was to > go with the flow and make the first split match the account in the > register. Oddly, in one case when I tried that, it kept changing the > *second* split to the ledger account.
Yeah, it's definitely funky! > Aside from the changing of the split's account issue, the behavior when > there are multiple splits with the ledger account in them seems weird. > Both the dancing around of the values and the way the display turns into > (apparently) two transactions seem undesirable to me. Even if it's not > a code "bug" it seems a confusing design (i.e., changing it would be > wishlist). Oh, this is not confusing at all if you know what double-entry is and why it is. (And auto-split is for people who understand double-entry!) A transaction is a set of--let's call them "entries". Each line (each split) is a single entry, and each entry must show up in some journal or other. For a transaction which simply moves money from account A to account B, it has two entries, and thus shows up in two journals: A, and B. If a transaction moves money from A to B, but moves it into B twice--that is, say, a debit in A of $10, a credit in B of $4, and a credit in B of $6, then there must be *three* entries, one in A (for $10), and two in B (for $4 and $6). What would you have it put in B's journal in that latter case? It cannot put $10, because there is no $10 entry to be found there. Nothing about the display is "two transactions"; you have thought all along that an entry is a transaction, but it's not, it's an entry. But if you think about it, this was *always* true. Transactions have *always* been showing up "more than once", and it never bothered you before, because you were thinking single-entry bookkeeping and were not thinking of matching credits and debits as being the *same* transaction. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
