help

[Derek Atkins]

Glen Ditchfield <gjditchfield@acm.org> writes:

> On January 5, 2003 11:48 am, David Hampton wrote:
> > How about just enabling the "Common Accounts" by default?  Its a simple
> > enough setup, and doesn't have the problem of any conflicts if the user
> > wants to enable more sets of accounts.  Perhaps a stripped down version
> > of the common accounts that has:
> >
> > 	Assets:Current Assets:Checking Account
> > 	Income
> > 	Expenses
> 
> The stripped-down version looks good to me.  Give it an account type like 
> "Just a checking account", a description like "The minimal set of accounts 
> needed to use GnuCash", and a detailed description like "Use this if you just 
> want to balance your checkbook.  Later on, you can start tracking income and 
> expenses in more detail if you feel the need."

What about "Equity:Opening Balances"?  I've left it out for now, but it
might cause some problems for opening balances... ;)  We can always add
it later.

> I wouldn't want "Common Accounts" selected by default.  When I started using 
> GnuCash, I just wanted to balance my checkbook, and if I'd seen that long 
> list, I'd have said "I'm supposed to track all that!!?", and run screaming 
> back to my homebrew spreadsheet.

I'm not convinced, but I could be convinced, that defaulting to
"nothing" is better than defaulting to the Common Accounts.  But I've
turned that off for now.  It's easy to turn it on later.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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