Filtering positive/negative account balances

[pedrobaeza]

Use case

In Spain, we have several sections in the Balance Sheet that includes the sum of balances that are greater than 0 in one side, and the opposite in the other side. They are for example the accounts 551. But the balance is not taken as a whole, but account per account. Example:

• You have in the account 551001 positive balance: then it should go to one side.
• You have in the account 551002 negative balance: then i should go to the other side.

So putting the expression (bale[551%] if bale[551%] > 0) doesn't work, and you can't define the expression if a fixed way like (bale[551001] if bale[551001] > 0) + (bale[551002] if bale[551002] > 0) + ... because there are infinite accounts: you have 551001, 551002, but also 5510001, 5510002... (with 7 digits), and so on.

Proposed solution

Add an account expansion mechanism at expression level. This can be an optional fifth letter in the expressions (for example, a). If included, mis_builder will switch the expression before passing it to the "SQL parsing" for making the expansion by account. Example: if you put the expression +(balea[551%] if balea[551%] > 0), it searches on the system the account selector, and unfolds the expression with the result:

+(bale[551000] if bale[551000] > 0)+(bale[551001] if bale[551001] > 0)+(bale[551002] if bale[551002] > 0)

and then continues the normal pipe

I don't know enough yet the mis_builder code, but maybe with a little guidance I can implement it.

[sbidoul]

Ah, the creativity of administrations is without limits :)

To be sure I understand, it could then mean that line 551 could appear on both sides, eg if 551001 has a positive balance and 551002 has a negative one?

[pedrobaeza]

Yeah, exactly.

[sbidoul]

So weird.

I'm thinking to solve this with (bal|pbal|nbal)[iep] to get the sum of positive or negative balances.

Let me think about it during the coming days.

[pedrobaeza]

OK, thanks.

[sbidoul]

Yet that is really weird. Because normally the administration is not interested in how accounts are organized below a certain level, so companies are free to add low level accounts as they please. This somehow exposes that fine structure to the administration.