Eric, Mike To be fair to GnuCash, I have not been able to find a formal definition of split in my accounting text books . The only formal references I could find were under IAS39 which deals with embedded derivatives in a hybrid financial instrument (https://www.ventureline.com/accounting-glossary/S/split-accounting-definition/) and that refers to the host contract in the instrument having to be accounted separately from the embedded derivative and in cost management accounting where a split-off point is defined for separate products which are produced by the same process up to a specific point in their production. There may be an informal practice of using split as a name or descriptor for specific operations and perhaps in some specific jurisdictions where the term may be defined in legislature.
Stock-splits are also generally prefixed by stock so that is clear, similarly for split-interest. Split Bills of Exchange are the only other formal reference I could find to usage of the term. Several other accounting programs use split in a manner analagous to, but not exactly the same as Gnucash. Xero for example refers to multiple components of the debit or credit side of a transaction as splits but does not refer to the debit and credit component themselves as splits which seems to be similar to what Mike's view of splits. In most cases they describe a single line entry, being either a debit or a credit in one account being split between credits or debits respectively in one or more other ledger accounts. The use of "split" in Gnucash to describe any of the components of a transaction either debit or credit is explained fairly comprehensively in the Gnucash documentation and the split data structure both reflects and supports this - it is not separate from it. Although the more common cases are either 1 debit and several credits or vice versa in a single transaction, there is no formal accounting restriction to these cases as long as the split structure describes the transaction adequately. ----- David Cousens -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org 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.
