Have you all noticed that in the ledger, when you are setting the category(account) that a transaction should be attributed to, you can add a new category(account) name and it will create it for you. Very cool feature. However, I noticed that you can only create Income and Expense accounts from the ledger entry form?
Is this intentional? Is it a technological limitation, code limitation or by design?
I find myself in the situation where I am tracking my rentals and I need to create security deposit accounts (these are liabilities) to track the security deposits my tenants make.
I figured I would start the topic here and see what people think.
Should the application allow the creation of Asset and Liabilities accounts from within the new transaction form?
The Category associates a transaction with an income or expense category for accounting and reporting purposes, and enables you to group certain transactions. Type the name of the category into the defined field. If you have entered the category and it does not exist then KMyMoney will ask if you want to create a new one. If the selection is Yes KMyMoney will then open a dialog box that allows for the further definition of the category based on General, Hierarchy and Tax characteristics.
So yes, the feature is not so new (could have been in older versions than 4.8) and the limitation to categories is by design.
I have no strong opinion about opening it to asset and liability accounts. That’s more a matter of how to do the UI on that.
I’ve been debating this in my mind. For a new Category, you only have to specify where in the hierarchy it is, which you can do any time after you finish creating the current transaction. For an asset or liability Account, choosing an Institution and location in the hierarchy of Accounts can also be done later. However, you also need to assign an opening date and opening balance, which I would not want to see delayed, as I think the user would be more likely to forget, and later run into difficulties. I suppose it would be possible to have fields for these two data items as part of the “do you want to create …” dialog.
However, one additional question. By default, when you enter an Account name in the Category dropdown, it is assumed you are specifying a Category. If you select an existing Asset or Liability Account, that is what indicates the transaction is a transfer. If you type a name which does not exist, how would the program know whether you want to create a Category of Asset/Liability Account? One option would be to have the initial “Do you want to create …” pop-up have buttons for “Create Category” or “Create Asset or Liability Account.” Choosing the former would work as it does currently, and selecting the latter would bring up a form asking for opening date and opening balance.
I like the idea of the pop up. In some financial software, all categories and accounts are the same. They are treated as accounts.
In any case, I think the pop up is a good idea. FYI: I do not use the transaction form. I always turn that off. Personal preference but I do not like the Transaction entry Form. I like the inline entry form.
