On 4/29/2023 2:39 AM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:
There's no hard rule either way. Some users feel strongly about not having any
transactions in placeholder accounts, though, and advocate loudly on the list
in support of it. But there's nothing in the software preventing a placeholder
account having transactions in it.
That said, the importer really shouldn't put transactions into a placeholder,
since the whole point of the placeholder designation is to prevent transactions
from being put there. That sounds like a bug.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a bug. Do we really need a prevent
stupid mistake fence here? A hard fence? << a soft fence that can be
enabled/disabled as a user option significantly more work >>
In the normal course of things, the logical INTENT of having a
placeholder account is that it is an account concept (sort of account)
that has a number of child accounts dividing that concept up in finer
detail. That said ....
Consider the work flow ... you are entering transactions and in that
process find you have a number within that concept that do NOT properly
fit any of the existing child accounts. Yes you can create accounts on
the fly BUT you might immediately see that once you have created this
new child or children, SOME of the transactions currently recorded in
one or more of the preexisting children really should be moved to one of
these new children.
In other words, you have work to do, and maybe in the middle of entering
transactions not the best place to do that work. I, for one, do not want
to ever interrupt the task of entering a stack of transactions because
THAT is a possible source of error, one that gnucash or any other
accounting app does not protect us from << getting wrong where we were
when resuming entering that stack; do one twice or miss one >>
SO .... I like it that I could temporarily enter these transactions into
the parent and leave the clean-up for a later time. The presence of
transactions in the parent that is logically a placeholder serves as a
reminder "you've got work to do here" << for THAT reason I would use the
following work flow for that --- first create the new child/children,
second move any in the preexisting children that better fit here, and
only last distribute those in parent to the proper children. That way,
if this task is interrupted, the transactions remaining in the parent
serve to indicate "not done yet". And in exceptional situations maybe
you want to leave an oddball transaction there (in the parent) because
you do not expect there to be others oddball in the same way.
So I would prefer using gnucash with the option "allow" (transactions in
parent intended as a placeholder) trusting my good sense from keeping me
from ACCIDENTALLY entering a transaction there.
Michael D Novack
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