On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 13:50:18 PDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
Charlton Rose <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> On Thu, 5 Apr 2001, Christian Stimming wrote:
>
> > Once again we had the question whether it makes sense at all to have
> > accounts with children in the hierarchy (non-leaf accounts) with
> > transactions in them. ... But in the long run we should consider
> > adding a flag to the account structure where the user can specify
> > "I'll not be using this account for transactions, only as
> > parent-account".
> If used correctly, parent accounts represent generalizations while
> child accounts represent specializations. For this reason, I think
> it makes a lot of sense to aggregate the subtotals into the parent
> account, even if it makes it difficult to see what the parent's
> actual contribution to the total might be. To solve that problem,
> perhaps you could display two numbers in main window. At any rate,
> don't remove that feature; make it a user preference.
This is a clear case where there are multiple valid answers.
There are legitimate reasons to care about _both_ values that could be
displayed, namely:
a) The net value of the transactions associated with an account, and
b) The net value of the transactions associated with an account _and
its children_.
Both values are important.
I would, frankly, suggest a _third_ approach to the hierarchy, which
would be to not make the (arguable) mistake of pretending that A/R or
A/P are actually, in any way, "cash."
I'd suggest, for that sort of example, a hierarchy looking something
like:
Current Assets
Checking Account
Savings Account
Accounts Receivable
Accounts Payable
That reflects better the fact that the payables/receivables aren't
"subservient" to the checking account; it attaches _all_ the accounts
to a more abstract "parent," called _Current Assets_.
[Aside: The fact that Payables are normally liabilities puts a bit of
a lie into the above; "Current Items" is probably more accurate, but
reads badly. And those that _really_ care will probably go with a
substantially different hierarchy anyways...]
--
(concatenate 'string "aa454" "@freenet.carleton.ca")
http://vip.hex.net/~cbbrowne/resume.html
"Linux! Guerrilla Unix Development Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus."
-- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mark A. Horton KA4YBR
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