newbie how-to-best-do-it ?

Jason Rennie jrennie@ai.mit.edu
Mon, 04 Sep 2000 09:07:15 -0400


Hi Frank,

fpmi@home.com said:
> What is unclear to me is how to set up accounts so that I may simply
> and clearly be able to evaluate how the accounts are doing both as
> single accounts and as a group (net worth).

So, if I understand you correctly, this can all be done through the 
hierarchical organization of accounts that GNUCash allows.  I would 
suggest that you take a look at:

  http://www.gnucash.org/docs/C/xacc-groups.html

Here, you'll see a sample account structure with a three-level 
hierarchical structure.

I guess one problem you could be having is not being able to create 
sub-accounts.  In the main account window, highlight an account, hit 
the "New" button, and type in the account information.  When you hit 
the "OK" button, there should appear a plus-sign next to the old 
account.  If you click the plus-sign, you'll see the sub-account that 
you created.

Organizing your accounts in such a hierarchical structure allows you to 
quickly get a sense of high-level expenses, income, etc. because the 
"balance" for a high-level account is the sum of the balances of all 
the sub-accounts.

Does this help?

Jason D Rennie                      www.ai.mit.edu/~jrennie/
MIT:  (617) 253-5339                      jrennie@ai.mit.edu
MITRE: (781) 271-7249                      jrennie@mitre.org