David, You have to look at the use cases of a wide range of users Some may have multiple vehicle and want to track expenses separately for each vehicle for example. being able to name the accounts the same for each vehicleis a great benefit They would want be be able to create 2 or more subaccounts named fuel each undera placeholder for the specific vehicle. Some may have accounts tagged with a customer's name. Having to have unique names for each account at the leaf level would likely create difficulties across the board. The path down the account tree gives you the necessary level of visual uniqeness and the GUID assigned to each account is unique so there is no problem with uniquely identifying a special account.
What is necessary to implement what David T desires and what appears to have been the default behaviouris for there to be a pointer to the unique guid of the imbalance account for each currency in use stored when it is first created and if GnuCash requires an Imbalance account it searches those pointers before creating a new one. That way it doesnt matter where the account sits in the CoA heirarchy (accounts are not stored internally in a tree structure but are just a serial linked lists of data objects with parent and child pointers) so it can be moved around with impunity and because there is a special pointer to its guid, located quickly without a tree search. Since it appears to have been introducedin the changes from 4.4 to 4.5 it should not be too hard to track down. It is most likely introduced when changes were made to the code for an unrelated reason. I think David T raised a bug report and if not he should as that will put it on the radar to be looked at. The discussion here is useful though as it highlights that a lot of us use Gnucash in sometimes subtly different ways and sometimes not so subtly different ways and it gives whoever does the programming information which can help to keep GnuCash flexible At the moment, I simply do as Michael Hendry suggested and delete the Imbalance accounts once I have fixed any problems when they do occur. My accounts in retirement are pretty simple though and I don't have a large number of errors. On Wed, 2021-06-02 at 16:05 -0500, David Carlson wrote: > Since you bring up the concept of reserved names, perhaps any account name > that Gnucash creates probably should be a reserved name so the entire > argument about creating accounts with the same name should be moot. Then > the previous behavior of allowing it to be moved would not be an issue. > > On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 3:56 PM David Carlson <david.carlson....@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > As David pointed out in his very first post of the other thread. GnuCash > > has removed an existing function without warning. Some of us use it and > > want it back. > > > > On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 3:40 PM Michael or Penny Novack < > > stepbystepf...@comcast.net> wrote: > > > > > On 6/2/2021 2:27 PM, D. via gnucash-user wrote: > > > > The discussion about the location of Imbalance-XXX accounts is under a > > > different thread, and I explained there my reasons for my account > > > structure > > > and Gnucash's previous implementation. Suffice to say that I'd rather keep > > > Imbalance-USD around (since it will get created all over again), but put > > > it > > > in the location of MY choosing. > > > > > > The "location" of an account is, in effect, part of its name, its full > > > name. You could have half a dozen accounts with the "name" Imbalance as > > > long as each was a different leaf of the tree (location in the CoA). How > > > do you propose gnucash to "know" WHICH of these you intend to be used as > > > the account to use for imbalance situations? > > > > > > What you are asking form in effect, is the ability to specify an account > > > to be used for the purpose. > > > > > > I know you are thinking, just look for a leaf with name Imbalance. That > > > could work IF gnucash reserved the name, disallowed you creating an > > > account with that name. Account names in gnucash do NOT have to be > > > unique/distinct. Is it the case that in your own books you do not have > > > accounts with the same "name" but different leaves of the tree so you > > > don't see the problem. The developers put Imbalance at the top level of > > > the tree precisely because that would be unique (could only be one). > > > > > > Michael D Novack > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > 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. > > > > > > > -- > > David Carlson > > > > _______________________________________________ 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.
