Default description for accounts

Hi @lubos I think there should be an option to set default description for accounts also the same way we can for inventory items, as now you have made accounts or account description a mandatory inclusion in all view forms.

That is incorrect, if you for example enable column description in payments or receipts the account disappears and is replaced by that description. If you want you can enable this using form defaults in settings permanently.

What you are saying about using form defaults will be useful only when we have fixed set of accounts to be used in that particular edit form
But whenever we use different accounts than what is defined in form defaults, we will need to type the description everytime, and this also raises the chance of typing different description (by mistake)for same account across same type of edit forms, hence leading to inconsistency in layout.

Have you tried using non-inventory items?

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You beat me to it was about to suggest the same, i.e. try non-inventory items.

In addition I would actually like to see a case where changing the account when not using items would make sense on for example a payment. Assume one pays for an electricity bill, then you would write some details of that payment in the optional description field and then select the electricity expense account. The view screen would show you the description and the account the payment was assigned to. What would be the need for this to be different?

What I mean to ask is what is the compelling use case?

Taking your example, it would be easy if the description field is auto-filled with something like “Payment against electricty bill no.” automatically when electricity expense account is selected, so then only bill no. is required to be inserted/added to the already filled text instead of writing whole line or lines of text(narration).

For this example you have an existing option by creating recurring payment invoices for electricity bills where you change the total on every invoice and where you add the payment to the invoice.

If not recurring you could use non-inventory item, create electricity bill and then use similar to inventory items in bills payments.

Please could you provide a compelling use case where existing options can not be used. I think that for many cases one can use non-inventory items and or invoices.

You can also clone or copy previous payments, then edit only fields that have changed from month to month. I almost never create a payment form from scratch.

We already have ability to set default tax code for accounts, I think ability to set default line description is valid feature request.

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Added to the latest version (22.7.24)

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