In my opinion, this topic should be strongly considered as an Idea for future releases. There are reasons why in others accounting software have this feature. A couple of them could be:
- You created an account for temporary use, like an account receivable or accounts payable for a loan that you can or will pay (or receive) in a short period of time. Maybe you don’t want to recognize an accounts payable / receivable in your aging because is for classification only and you don’t need to have a new supplier / customer for this kind of transaction. Also, maybe you have more than one, let’s say, loan receivable / payable and the need to identify all of them in different accounts.
- Intercompany loans (they don’t exist forever).
- One-time income / expenses that you need to register in a specific category but later you will not need this account in your books.
- Temporary special accounts that maybe you will not need anymore in the future.
- Simply, like bank accounts, not all accounts are really needed in all years of your business. Maybe you opened an investing account that years later you need to close and maybe it will never be used again. Maybe you have an opportunity to bring a new service to your business (let’s say, you have a commissions based business and later you have the opportunity to do Consulting) but later turns out that it’s not cost-effective for your business.
- There’s no need for a long, never-end chart of accounts when you can make some accounts you don’t use anymore inactive.
Note that an inactive account doesn’t mean that the accounts will disappear for reporting purposes.
There are a lot of reasons to make an account inactive and not necessarily to delete the account due to past transactions in it. They could act like the inactive banks accounts act in Manager; even if you make a bank account inactive, you can always view your reports from the past and the accounts are there, you can see the transactions, etc. I don’t really see a reason not to implement this Idea; I think it could be a great addition to the Manager features.