Entering transactions more quickly

[Conrad Canterford]

On Tue, 2002-11-05 at 09:36, Rich Shepard wrote:
>   I must have missed something important here because trying to enter
> transactions is painfully slow and inefficient. I'm sure there's a much
> better way. I'm running gnucash-1.6.6-3 here.

Yes, you're missing something important  :-).

You do not use the transfer dialog to enter transactions. Enter them
directly into the register. The reason that only assets, liabilities and
equity are visible in the transfer dialog is because a "transfer" is
moving money around between those types of accounts.

At the bottom of the register you will see a blank transaction with
todays date in the date column (it should be highlighted,if not, double
click on the date to make the whole thing highlighted first. You may
enter the date manually, or use the following keys to modify the date: +
and - move the date forward or backward by one day. [ and ] move the
date forward or backward by one month. (There are also keys to do the
same for years, and others as well, but I don't use them, so I don't
remember them).
<TAB> to the next field. This is the cheque (check in American) number
or other number meaningful to you - note that transactions on the same
date will use this as their secondary sorting field. I think + and -
work here too, but again, I've never used it, so I'm not sure.
<TAB> to the next field - the transaction description. This should be
fairly obvious, but there is a nifty feature (I like it, I know others
do not) - if you enter the same description as a previously entered
transaction, Gnucash suggests that description to you - you can accept
it (type <TAB> again) or keep typing a new description. If you accept
the description, Gnucash will auto-complete the rest of the transaction
to be the same as the last entered one of that description.
<TAB> to the next field (unless you used tab to accept an
autocompletion).

I won't explain the rest of this step-by-step, as its wordy to explain,
and it seems fairly self-explanatory really. Note that in the Account
field, you can start typing in the field, and if you have the right
option selected in the Preferences (Auto-Raise Lists under the Register
tab) Gnucash will pop-up the account listbox, with the first matching
account name selected.

If you have any further questions, feel free to ask here. I'll be away
from my desk for the next one and a half weeks, and won't be able to
respond.

Conrad.
-- 
Conrad Canterford  (conrad@mail.watersprite.com.au)
Water Sprite Pty Ltd   |  url - http://www.watersprite.com.au/
GPO Box 355,           |  - Australian Tour and Event Management (ATEM)
Canberra, ACT 2601     |  - Ticketing Division.
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