Beginners question, confused between real bank accounts and gnucash accounts

[Ed Fields]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 2:59 PM, Dale Alspach <alspach at math.okstate.edu>
wrote:

> transaction


​Hello Dale and group

I too am not an accountant.  Your 4 entry solution (reproduced here)

credit Business checking
debit  Distributions to owner
credit Income salary
debit Personal checking

​appears to be a possible concept for a solution to an issue I am grappling
with in regards to mutual fund distributions​.

   - ​I currently enter the full fund distribution amount into my 'Assets-
   Investment
   ​s-Mutual Fund
   -XYZ
   ​'​

   ​account and link the total amount as a deposit to
   my checking account.
   ​

   - Concurrently, I manually maintain ​a second account '
   Income-Investment
   ​ Income
   -XYZ'
   ​ to record the capital gains portion of the distribution.

This works and is easy for me to comprehend, but I am driven to do things
the proper way and I sense that another solution should would be better.
​It
seems to me that gnuCash
​can be used to
 handle this and that it is me that doesn't understand the logic and
mechanism needed to record these profits into my
​personal account book.

I'd like to spit the distribution into two parts, gain and taxfree, but
then have the total appear as one entry in my checking account.


Could you illustrate another solution for me,
or perhaps point me to a solution previously discussed in this forum?

many thanks
ed (retired, and using gnuCash to keep food on the table and my mind in 4th
gear :-)