MS-Money user so GNUcash newbie and first post

[Yawar Amin]

Hi,

On 2010-11-07, at 18:33, Robert Heller wrote:

> At Sun, 7 Nov 2010 08:57:52 -0800 (PST) "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>> 
>>> […]
>> 
>> Actually, the Description field in each transaction is the Payee, and it is visible at all times in the register. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding you? 
> 
> Actually, the destination account is effectivey the 'Payee’.

I tend to do it David’s way.

> […]
> If you write a check to the power
> company to pay for your electric bill money goes from Assets::Checking
> to Expenses::Utilities::Power-Company, where 'Power-Company' is the
> Payee of the check.

That’s certainly a feasible way thanks to GnuCash’s accounts flexibility.

> […]
> You can, if you prefer, name the account
> 'Expenses::Utilities::Electricity' and put 'National Grid' as the
> description (where 'National Grid' would be the name of the electric
> company).

This is what I do. The reason is, think about what would happen if you carry this approach to its logical extreme. Let’s say you dine out a lot and go to many (say 50) restaurants. Do you create an account for each restaurant (50 different accounts), or do you just put the name of the restaurant in the Description field? The latter seems much more doable to me. So if you could ever face a scenario like this, you might as well stick to the scheme of putting the vendor name in the Description field and have it the same for all transactions.

> OTOH, putting in the power company's invoice number in the
> description might be more useful.

Yes–or if you want to take advantage of auto-completion when typing in a new transaction, you could always keep the same company name in the Description field, and type the invoice # in the memo field for the Expenses:Utilities:Electricity split.

Regards,

Yawar

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