GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 712764
Clarify Account type designations in the Tutorial
Last modified: 2018-06-29 23:21:36 UTC
The Tutorial chapter describing Accounts: GnuCash Accounts presently describes the account types that are listed in the Edit Accounts dialog plus a couple more. There are several other account types that may be created by the New Account Hierarchy Setup Assistant or just set up by the user as he desires. Some of these are Other Asset, Checking, Trading, Currency and Money Market. I suggest retaining the current text for account types that are created by the Edit Accounts dialog, but adding a header before account types that may be created by the New Account Hierarchy Setup Assistant and also adding a TIP stating that the user can add more types if he so desires.
While I'm not really happy with the way the accounts are described here, they are all there except ACCOUNT_TYPE_TRADING, which is available only from the Account Editor. It does need to be described, that's already documented in Bug 653386. OK, there are a few others: ACCT_TYPE_CURRENCY hasn't been required since GnuCash-1.7.0, it's still in Accounts.h for backwards compatibility. ACCT_TYPE_ROOT is the anchor of the chart of accounts, but users can't see it. Four are marked in Account.h as "don't use this for now": ACCT_TYPE_CHECKING is (improperly) exposed in the python bindings, but used nowhere; ACCT_TYPE_SAVINGS is used only in a couple of unit tests; and ACCT_TYPE_MONEYMRKT and ACCT_TYPE_CREDITLINE are used only in the OFX importer, apparently for completeness with the spec. In reality, it's too many types: There's no behavioral difference between a CC and any other liability, nor between cash and bank, nor between stock and mutual fund. The user absolutely can not create more types. The account types are hard-coded in Accounts.h.
John, I believe you made a typo, intending to refer to bug 635386. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635386 I was incorrect about being able to add account types. Perhaps that was because it is possible to make it appear that way when using the New Account Hierarchy Setup Assistant and when editing the Chart of Accounts. The description might point out that the Chart of accounts creation rules are (mostly?) independent of the the account types and do not preclude adding more account names at the highest sub-level. In the light of your description of the account types actually recognized by the program code I would still like to see the Tutorial description re-written to include descriptions of the account types visible to users clarifying when there are differences in behavior and when the differences are in naming only. It might be nice to have a footnote about the others that you mentioned. I will give myself the task to create a revised text for this section, but it will take some time. I would welcome more suggestions from others about the form and content thereof. John, bug 635386 implies that the type 'currency' may be handled differently than stocks and mutual funds. Am I correct?
ACCT_TYPE_CURRENCY is used in only a couple of places for backwards compatibility, and it should be impossible to create new instances. The currency accounts mentioned in Bug 635386 are ACCT_TYPE_TRADING.
Created attachment 326461 [details] [review] Clarify Account type designations in the Tutorial 1. Change Guide references to account type "Other Assets" to "Asset" 2. Add comment about Trading, Money Market and Credit Line 3. Add comments about no difference between: CASH, BANK and ASSET Credit Card and Liability Stock and Mutual Fund Actually I'm not 100% positive there is no GnuCash difference between say CASH and ASSET. Maybe there is a difference I'm unaware of, say to do with which account types can be used as top level accounts, which explains why John didn't mention ASSET being the same as CASH/BANK? As always, if I am mistaken, I'm happy to correct.
Committed to maint, thanks! This will appear in the next gnucash release.
Reassign version to 2.4.x so that individual 2.4 versions can be retired.
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. This bug has been copied to https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=712764. Please update any external references or bookmarks.