Transfers Between Checking and Savings

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>"how much less confusing accounting can be
>than my previous spreadsheet based hack jobs (generated with no
>understanding of what double entry bookkeeping is)."
>
>  
>
If one DID understand double entry bookkeeping the old fashioned way pen 
and in on paper then you COULD use any typical spreadsheet program with 
the pages with columns "ruled" the way standard journal and ledger paper 
would be. BUT (very big but)

a) You would be subject to all the work of "posting" entries from the 
journal to the ledger accounts.

b) You would be subject to transcription errors during posting.

c) You would have to do all the standard reports the old fashioned way 
manually transcribing and again subject to error.

d) The ONLY help the spreadsheet application would be giving you is help 
avoiding errors in addition.

THAT is the big plus of gnucash, that it is "autoposting" and able to 
generate the reports (you actually enter directly into the ledger 
accounts but a "journal" is available to you should you want one (as a 
report). Errors doing "b" and "c" and the resulting work of finding and 
correcting them was the nightmare of old fashioned bookkeeping. You had 
to learn a bunch of rules* of thumb for guessing the probable nature of 
the error based on the discrepancy but those mainly useful when there is 
only one error.

Michael

* For example, if the discrepancy is divisible by 9 you probably 
transposed a pair of digits.
123 + 256 = 379    123 + 265 = 388     388 - 379 = 9  which is divisible 
by 9
123 + 256 = 379    123 + 526 = 649     649 - 379 = 270 which is 
divisible by 90  (so the digits transposed to the left)
But that's just ONE of the rules for finding errors. Aren't you glad 
gnucash never makes this sort of mistake! I learned in the old days 
before computers were available for small scale bookkeeping.