Suggested (and Requested) Feature

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/12/2015 10:26 AM, Neal Lithwick wrote:
> Hi
>
>
> I would love to migrate over to this program but I have one problem (so
> far). I need to have the ability to set a Starting Balance for the balance
> sheet items as I am not starting anew but migrating over from Money Smith.
> Since every transaction needs to be reconciled, I would have to go back 7
> years and enter each transaction to get this to work (Money Smith does not
> have a file format compatible with GnuCash migration requirements).
>
>   Any chance you might consider adding this feature to this program?
>
>   Neal
The only time you would need to do THAT is if "Money Smith" no longer 
worked. Normal in a situation like this, especially where close to the 
start of the year, is to continue to use "Money Smith" for years 2014 
and before (in case you need to refer to that data, for example, doing 
your 2014 taxes) but using gnucash for 2015 and forward. You would do 
this by ........

In "Money Smith produce a Balance Sheet report for 12/31/14 (end of 
2014). I am assuming that "Money Smith" has at least that capability. 
Print that out unless you have multiple terminal capability or the next 
step will drive you crazy. You will probably also want a P&L Report so 
you see the various income and Expense Accounts you had under "Money Smith".

Now use THIS data to create your chart of accounts under gnucash. Don't 
for the moment bother about opening balances (let them all be zero). It 
will make you "open the books" transaction cleaner and you will have a 
chance to see that you have the chart of accounts the way you want it 
before actually entering data.

Make a copy of this file! (in case you have an accident with the opening 
transaction(s). Read the documentation on "splits". I recommend that 
that you use TWO opening transactions because a two way split is tricky 
and you are new to gnucash. If you have no liabilities (unlikely, but of 
course possible) you'd only have one transaction anyway.

Now look at that Balance Sheet. Let's say you will do assets first. You 
can date the opening transaction 12/31/14 and then it won't show up on 
your 2015 reports but that is up to you. The easiest way to do the split 
is to start in equity where you credit the amount "total assets" and 
then hit split. Chance the debit amount to the amount of the first asset 
account and specify the account. On to the next and repeat until all are 
done. There should be nothing left as "Imbalance". Now do the same for 
your liabilities, again starting in equity as a debit, split, and now 
all the liability accounts.

At this point I'd run a Balance Sheet in gnucash. Compare with the one 
from "Money Smith". You are now at the beginning of 2015.

Now you enter all your transactions from Jan 1st 2015 to present (a 
month and a half of data, not seven years). When done, run Balance 
Sheets from both programs (for that end date), "Money Smith's" P&L for 
Jan 1, 2015 to that end date and gnucash's Income Statement for the same 
time interval. Everything should match up.

If it does, you have a choice. You can consider it done and just use 
gnucash, or you can have a test period for a while using both until you 
are confident with gnucash.

Michael D Novack

PS: You CAN of course specify opening balances as you create the 
accounts. But that just makes a whole bunch of opening transactions 
instead of the two or one. And I don't know what date would get assigned.

> .