how to automatically update equity account as each transaction is entered?

[Tommy Trussell]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 9:00 PM, Francis Gerund <ranrund at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Geert,
> Sorry, but I could not even begin to "suggest improvements to the
> documentation", or "help write some missing parts".  One has to learn
> something first, before trying to teach it to others.
>
> Michael,
> I am thinking maybe I should just forget GnuCash for now, and just try to
> re-learn what accounting I did know years ago, the way I learned it then:
> by using paper ledger pads - the kind you can still get at office supply
> stores.  Agonizingly tedious, but at least the ledger pads won't argue with
> the accounting books (with me in the middle)!
>


You may be presuming that any documentation you write would be used to
teach someone the correct way to use GnuCash, but given your experience,
maybe you might consider keeping a journal about how things went awry! If
you consider it a story about a journey to learn, maybe that mindset would
help you and others. I know it might be helpful to folks as they consider
how to improve the software.

I think most of us who have never been trained in "proper" accounting might
benefit from more experiences of someone making a transition from paper
ledgers.

You might also benefit from reading the email list archives, because
beginner issues have been discussed numerous times; maybe you just haven't
yet seen any messages that related to your particular issues.

FURTHERMORE I hope you also haven't completely given up on the
documentation...

http://www.gnucash.org/docs.phtml

 -- some folks have misunderstood the distinction between the two manuals.

The Help Manual mostly contains the Help text that gets installed into the
application, so after some brief introductory text, most sections are
focused on individual pieces of the software and how to get specific tasks
completed, written assuming you are also looking at the screen trying to
get a task done.

The Tutorial and Concepts Guide gives an overview of the software, and
includes tutorials. By working through a few of the examples, many folks
have been able to get a better sense for what the software is doing. The
Concepts Guide also describes how the software supports general accounting
principles.

As you go through the documentation and try the software, if you keep a
journal of what worked and what didn't, your perspective might be useful to
anyone writing new documentation (or maybe even answering questions on the
list). If you found the examples irrelevant, that's important, too,
especially if you can also supply an example from your own ledgers.

As you can see from the documentation page, someone has also written a
book, sold through normal book vendors. It's several years old now, but
possibly you can inspect the free sample pages and see if maybe its
approach is more to your liking.