[GNC] How to record payments for several items paid with a single transaction?

[Michael or Penny Novack]

I'm just going to speak to this part of the matter.

a) The way you enter a transaction via "split" is the original way all 
transactions were entered. First into the "journal" and then posted to 
the "ledger". When you are entering a "split" you are in journal mode 
though with gnucash the journal is virtual and completing the 
transaction posts it to the ledger. The "ledger" is your gnucash 
accounts, the CoA. You did this way (in the "old" days even when the 
transaction involved just two accounts.

b) The way we normally enter transactions in gnucash when only two 
accounts involved is a shortcut. Since in practice, the vast majority of 
transactions involve just two accounts, that means most of the time. 
Since most of you never did bookkeeping pen and ink on paper, I won't 
bother explaining how "cashbook accounting" worked, which was a pen and 
ink on paper shortcut for the situation of only two accounts and  both 
in a very popular subset of accounts. But essentially THAT is what 
gnucash is modeling when we use the (normal) shortcut for just two accounts.

In other words, how we enter split transactions in gnucash is the 
GENERAL CASE (how we can enter ANY transaction). How we normally enter 
transactions in gnucash is using a SPECIAL CASE shortcut for just two 
accounts. But the percentage of transactions that meet the special case 
criteria is >90% so in our minds what is special and what is general 
gets switched.

Michael D Novack


> Would a split transaction work for this?  However I thought split
> transactions are for joining together payments to 'different' places
> rather than joining together several payments to and from the same
> places.
>
>
> Any/all help would be very welcome.
>

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.