Expense accounts etc...

[Yawar Amin]

Hi Dennis,

On 2010-11-07, at 00:15, Dennis Powless wrote:

> I have just converted my 10+ years of quicken data to gnucash....  I
> had quite a bit of work to get things done.  I have gotten the
> checkbooks and credit cards all up and running, I think.

Welcome to GnuCash–congratulations on choosing a Free Software accounting program. For answers and discussions, you’re in the right place :-)

> […]
> 
> I have several accounts that are not active like old credit cards and
> some banks.  I also have a few accounts that are still active that
> span this whole time.  Can I delete these old accounts or do I hide
> them.  Do they still contribute to the networth etc….?

You can hide accounts, in which case they will continue to exist with all their transactions–they just won’t be visible unless you unhide them again. If you delete them, then all their transactions will be gone, so that will make your data inaccurate.

> What happens to all the money i transfer to the expense accounts (used
> to be categories in quicken)?  Does this impact the networth? or
> balances?

Money in and out of income and expense accounts affect your net worth according to the double-entry Accounting Equation.[1]

> I feel I have figured out this wonderful program, I just need to get
> it to work for some of the older stuff.

If your accounts and transactions imported correctly, it should ‘just work’. Try out some reports and set the date range to the past 5 to 10 years, and check out the generated reports.

> I toyed with the idea of starting over from the last statements for my
> accounts, is this advisable?

You can do this, but you won’t have old financial data available for report generation purposes. You’ll only have financial data since your last statements. Of course, you can keep your 10 years of data in an archive GnuCash file and start a new file with your new data. Up to you. You probably want to consult your accountant for legal archival requirements (number of years to retain, when can you delete, etc.).

Hope this helps,

Yawar

[1] http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/basics-accounting1.html#basics-accountingequation2

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