Newbie's experience with gnucash

[Jason Godfrey]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 04:14:21PM -0600, Eric Schwartz wrote:
> >You are now done.  If you used $1000 as your opening balance, you'll
> >see that Bank has 1000 and Retained Earnings has -1000.  That's not
> >exactly what I told you before (a = l + e); gnucash is using a
> >slightly different form that gives Equity the opposite sign
> >(a - l + e = 0).
> 
> Er, what's a, I, and e?  My guesses are: a = equity, I = income, e = 
> expense (with a - sign
> in front, so you can add)?

I think it's a = assets, l (L, not i) = liabilities, and e = equitities. But
I am not an accountant.

> >Close.  Payments and income are special subtypes of equity, and have
> >their own account types.
> 
> I'm at work now; I'l check this when I go home.  So I'd create the account
> "Cheque from apt. mgr" (or some such) of type Income, and transfer out the
> amount of the cheque from it to my checking account, then?

Well, probably not "Cheque from apt. mgr", unless you would've had a category
with that name in quicken. I have (roughly) three income accounts: "Salary", 
"Interest", and "Misc.". I would use "Misc" for this case.

> >They are different for tax purposes in most places (income is taxable,
> >expenses are tax deductions).
> 
> Of course, not all income is taxable, nor are all expenses deductable.  Are 
> there plans to
> add a "tax-related" flag to gnucash accounts?

I just saw a note about this in the developers list. I don't remember if it was
"it's going in" or "should we add it?", but the topic was around.


I know all this can be a bit overwhelming to start with. It took me a day
or two to wrap my head around these terms / ideas. At times I still wonder if 
I messed something up. But the more I use gnucash the more I like the system.
It forces me to keep better track of where my money is going and coming from.
It's worth it.

I too have been thinking that a less reference, more task based 
documentation set would be nice. Nice enough where I was thinking about 
working on one. I'm not sure wether the best place for such documentation 
would be somewhere in the main gnucash help, or as a separate document. 
Anyways, that is probably more of a topic for the developer list. 

- Jason