Bug 444089

Summary: New loan account without existing payments has no opening balance
Product: [Applications] kmymoney Reporter: greywolver
Component: generalAssignee: KMyMoney Devel Mailing List <kmymoney-devel>
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG    
Severity: normal    
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.1.2   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description greywolver 2021-10-20 07:34:07 UTC 
SUMMARY
When creating a new account, the "opening balance" option from the account page will be ignored. The only way to add an opening balance is by selecting "Yes" to "Did you make/receive any payments yet?" and selecting "Start with this year's payments" on the following question.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Create new loan account
2. Give the account a starting balance
3. Do *not* answer "yes" to having already made payments.
4. Continue to summary page or finish creating the account.

OBSERVED RESULT
The Summary page does not list a starting balance. The created account starts at 0. 

EXPECTED RESULT
The Summary page will list a starting balance. The created account will have the value given as the starting balance. 

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux/KDE Plasma: 5.23.0
(available in About System)
KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.87.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Comment 1 Thomas Baumgart 2021-10-22 20:22:25 UTC 
Short answer: this is expected behavior.

Reason: if you select to track all transactions then the initial payout transaction is one of them. If you suppress to generate this in the course of setting up the loan account then no transactions will be in the loan account.

Suppose you have three accounts: C your checkings accounts filled with some money, L a loan account and V an asset account to represent the value of the vehicle you want to buy. Let's say, the vehicle costs 10.000 and your checkings account can afford to pay 3.000 of that. For the remaining 7.000 you get a loan and create a loan account. The following transactions will reflect that:

Balances before:
C: 4.000
V: 0
L: 0

Transactions (cash and loan payout) :
C -> V: 3.000
L -> V: 7.000

Balances after:
C: 1.000
V: 10.000
L: -7.000

In case you don't track all transactions L has already a balance which is the so called opening balance. The counter account for it is the opening balances equity account so that your books stay balanced. The same applies for your asset account.
Comment 2 greywolver 2021-10-23 05:38:28 UTC 
(In reply to Thomas Baumgart from comment #1)
> Reason: if you select to track all transactions then the initial payout
> transaction is one of them. If you suppress to generate this in the course
> of setting up the loan account then no transactions will be in the loan
> account.

I think I get it now, but let me check my understanding. 

By default, I need to put in the payment of where the loan is going to (in my case, student loans). The "Did you make/receive any payments yet?" option plus the "this year" option are an ease-of-use tool in case the loans has been around for a while and I don't want to put in all previous payments?

I'm still very new to this double-entry bookkeeping stuff.
Comment 3 Thomas Baumgart 2021-10-23 06:18:42 UTC 
Yes, that is basically it.

About the double entry bookkeeping: did you read https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/kmymoney/kmymoney/makingmostof.html#makingmostof.basicaccounting

p.s. This is a bug tracker and not so much a discussion forum for user questions. This is better done on https://forum.kde.org/viewforum.php?f=69
Comment 4 Ralf Habacker 2024-08-17 17:32:32 UTC 
Moved to 'general' component