The mother of all newbie questions: how do I start? :o)

[Ben Woodard]

I too was mystified by this just a couple of days ago. What I ended up
doing was setup one account with an opening balance, in this case my
wallet. Then gnucash created an account called "Opening Balance" and
then I went back through all the accounts that I previously setup and
created the first entry which either drew or contributed to the
"opening balance" account.

Just as a suggestion, the next problem that I ran into which was
caused by the way that gnucash delt with opening balances was when I
first went to reconcile my checking account. The problem was that the
opening balance transaction through things off. What I figured out
that I needed to do was first reconcile the account with the opening
balance of the current bank statement being the closing balance in the
reconcile window. This cleared the opening balance transaction. Then I
went back and did another reconcile with my bank statement.

It would be really nice if these things two things were documented in
the manual.

-ben

begin  Roberto Meyer  quotation:
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I don't know how to open the balance! :oP
> 
> I setup all the accounts I imagined I'll need, but now, how do I begin?
> 
> I read gnucash's help and I understood I need to create an equity account to do it, but gnucash keeps asking for a double entry record.  I suppose (never took accounting at school, hope you'll not notice :-) I must create some kind of Income account, don't I?
> 
> TAL for your answers,
> 
> --
> Roberto
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