While using Actions->New Account Hierarchy (or running Gnucash for the first time), any opening balances added to accounts show up in the New Account Hierarchy Setup form but reset to zero upon creation. The Opening Balance also isn't adjusted. Specifying Opening Balance _does_ work when a New Account is created. The account gets the balance and Opening Balances is adjusted too. Just seems to not work for New Account Hierarchy. As to the version/OS: I used 4.4 with: - flatpak on Centos 8 Stream, - Ubuntu 20.04 - Windows 10 I see this problem in all three. An older 3.8 on Ubuntu 20.04 works well. If it helps, I am in India and have INR as the currency. I tried to use New Account Hierarchy setups from GB/US/IN, all have the same issue. Thanks Devendra
Oops, there has recently been a change: bug 797836
(In reply to Frank H. Ellenberger from comment #1) > Oops, there has recently been a change: bug 797836 The mentioned changes are not activated yet, see https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/820
(In reply to ralf.habacker from comment #2) > The mentioned changes are not activated yet, see > https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/820 Ralf, can you compare the behaviour before and after https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/762 ? BTW I am really sorry, that I had not the time to watch and support your work closer.
(In reply to Frank H. Ellenberger from comment #3) > Ralf, can you compare the behaviour before and after > https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/762 ? The only commit which is associated to creating a new hierachy is commit https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/762/commits/a2aca9da66e9c5eeb38484629907f4bb8df2af1b. The change isenabled without the mentioned activation and reverting that commit fixes the issue.
(In reply to ralf.habacker from comment #4) > > The only commit which is associated to creating a new hierachy is commit > https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/762/commits/ > a2aca9da66e9c5eeb38484629907f4bb8df2af1b. After reverting this patch, this problem is still present (tested with the en_GB common accounts template) and, as far as I can see, is not caused by the changes introduced by pull request 762. The cause must be somewhere else.
(In reply to ralf.habacker from comment #4) > The change is enabled without the mentioned activation and reverting that > commit fixes the issue. To be more specific - that was tested with the patches from https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/820 applied and german skr03 template.
(In reply to ralf.habacker from comment #5) > (In reply to ralf.habacker from comment #4) > > > > The only commit which is associated to creating a new hierachy is commit > > https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/762/commits/ > > a2aca9da66e9c5eeb38484629907f4bb8df2af1b. > > After reverting this patch, this problem is still present (tested with the > en_GB common accounts template) and, as far as I can see, is not caused by > the changes introduced by pull request 762. The cause must be somewhere > else. I rechecked this on another computer with multiple templates (de_DE/acctchart_common, de_DE/acctchart_car, de_DR/acctchart_skr03, en_GB/acctchart_common, en_GB/acctchart_car) and opening balance account support enabled and disabled and it turned out that with the initial commit of pull requests https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/820 happened missing the enable in the wizard hierarchy. When using https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/820/commits/7cebb327ad5dd9de52a98d9d58ab60523380d4d8, this error no longer occurred.
Associated pull request https://github.com/Gnucash/gnucash/pull/856
Which is merged, and I've tested that entries in the New Account Hierarchy Assistant are correctly incorporated.
On gnucash-user (https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2021-April/096144.html), Frank suggested that this bug may explain the situation I encountered when adding a new Stock account to an existing Chart of Accounts. Specifically, I now get an empty Equity: Opening Balances - XXX account for *every* new Stock or Mutual Fund account I make. Since I am neither invoking the New Account Hierarchy nor creating a new file, I should not get new Equity accounts created for me.
This patch should be reverted. There are significant problems with the implementation that affect every user who tracks stocks, mutual funds, or multiple currencies. (For the record, I'd hazard a guess that this includes the VAST majority of GnuCash users.) 1) New equity accounts are created whenever an account that uses a commodity/currency that differs from the base currency is created *or deleted*. This latter result is absurd; if I delete the commodity account, why should a new equity account be created for an asset that is being deleted? 2) The new equity account is created regardless of whether a transaction includes a split to this new equity account, leading to the creation of numerous empty equity accounts that the user has to delete after the fact. That there are no splits in this equity account underscores that this process is unnecessary. 3) The new Opening Balance setting in the Account dialog has no effect on the creation of new equity accounts. New equity accounts are created regardless. 4) It is unacceptable to have the program creating new equity accounts for existing books completely silently.
David, No, the change should not be reverted. It fixes a serious design deficiency. You're right that creating a new opening balance account when there's no opening balance transaction is a bug. You've been around long enough to know that bugs often happen in new code and that you should file a new bug documenting them, not demand that a fix to a closed bug should be reverted. Your last claim is ridiculous. GnuCash has always auto-created the Equity:Opening Balances accounts completely silently. You can't seriously believe that it would improve UX to put up a dialog telling the user that it needs to create an account to balance the opening balance transaction.
John, I'll file a new bug. Before this change, I've only ever seen *one* Equity: Opening Balances account created in my accounts (created back in 2005, when I created my file). Over the course of the past 16 years, I've NEVER had another equity account created for any of the 200+ accounts with different commodity types. The idea of creating separate equity accounts for every single commodity in a book should probably be more fully discussed. It is not clear to me why all of a sudden this functionality is considered necessary; the system worked just fine for two decades without it.
(In reply to David from comment #13) > John, I'll file a new bug. Thanks. For continuity here it's bug 798163. > > Before this change, I've only ever seen *one* Equity: Opening Balances > account created in my accounts (created back in 2005, when I created my > file). Over the course of the past 16 years, I've NEVER had another equity > account created for any of the 200+ accounts with different commodity types. > The idea of creating separate equity accounts for every single commodity in > a book should probably be more fully discussed. It is not clear to me why > all of a sudden this functionality is considered necessary; the system > worked just fine for two decades without it. Right, because having opening balances in stock/fund accounts is rare: One generally needs to record the actual acquisition for computing capital gains when you dispose of it. I don't argue at all that we should create accounts when there isn't an opening balance to go into them. *But* if you do specify an opening balance in a stock account in a version of GnuCash before 4.2 then GnuCash will silently create an equity account in that commodity to take the balancing split.
