[GNC] two lines for every entry

[Adrien Monteleone]

Sorry to break it to you. You have to care, to enter the transaction.

EACH AND EVERY transaction has two entries or splits.

A payment will have one split to the card account and the other to whatever asset you used to make that payment.

Accounting isn’t adding things up. (well, not simply anyway)

It is tracking *where* money is coming from and *where* it is going to.

You have to track both parts, not just one side.

If you made a cash payment one month, enter that as:

Dr. Liabilities:Credit Card:VISA-1234
Cr. Assets:Current Assets:Cash

If you later made a payment by check:

Dr. Liabilities:Credit Card:VISA-1234
Cr. Assets:Current Assets:Checking

Not all payments have to be from the same place, but you do have to say where they came from. That’s how it works.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Apr 11, 2019, at 2:33 AM, ToddAndMargo via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
> On 4/11/19 12:04 AM, AC wrote:
>> On 2019-04-10 23:48, ToddAndMargo via gnucash-user wrote:
>>> So, do I set up two account for every credit card?  Will
>>> the link cover this?
>>> 
>> You set up one account for the card (Liabilities: Credit Card), one for
>> the bank (Assets: Bank) and then you have as many set up as you want for
>> expenses.
>> When you buy something, charge the card and have the "other" account be
>> Expenses: Groceries, Expenses: Gasoline, etc.  Whatever you want as long
>> as the "other" account is some kind of expense account.
>> When you pay the credit card, it comes from Assets: Bank
>> Things like Quicken and Microsoft Money hid this by using the Payee as
>> the "other" account so it was relatively automatic.  But GnuCash also
>> does auto-fill as you type so if your Description field was
>> "Supermarket" for the first time you set up a transaction between the
>> credit card and Expenses: Groceries, it'll remember that account
>> arrangement next time you enter "Supermarket" and then you only have to
>> change the amount.
>> For basic tracking the accounts will only have to be set up once and the
>> auto-fill will help you out afterwards (just change the amounts).
>> If you have more than one card just set it up as Liabilities: Card 1,
>> Liabilities Card 2, or other arrangements however you wish as long as
>> they're all liability accounts.  Same for multiple bank accounts, just
>> make sure they're all asset accounts.
> 
> In my next life.
> 
> Right now I just want to enter charges and payment to
> a credit card.  Where the payment comes from, I DON'T CARE.
> 
> This is very frustrating for me.