Some beginner questions

[Wesley Sheldahl]

Thanks for trying GnuCash!  See answers below.

On 2001.02.26 03:55 Jan Handwerker wrote:
> Dear *,
> 
> at first I have to thank Robert Graham Merkel again. With his help
> gnucash in
> now running on my linux pc. 
> 
> I'm a former money user and changed to gnucash this sunday. I used money
> since
> the day of win 3.1 (it's money 2.0) and I've been very familiar with it.
> Now I
> want to test wether I can leave windows a little bit more. 
> 
> Now, I've got a few questions about gnucash:
> 
> 1. Is there a complete text book as a manual?

GnuCash comes with on an online manual, accessible via "Help" on the menu
bar.  If you're not familiar with double-entry accounting, you might want
to find a book on accounting or finances and at least read over the chapter
that covers how double-entry works.  If you have a specific question that
doesn't seem to be covered in the online manual, you can either search the
archives of this mailing list, or post the question here.
 
> 2. What is meant by "scrub a account"? What happens with my data when I
> press
> this button?

Normally, GnuCash requires every transaction you enter in an account to
have a balancing transaction in another account.  When you import data,
this might not always be true.  When you "scrub" an account, it goes
through and looks for unbalanced transactions and creates balancing
transactions in an account called "Unbalanced" or something similar. 
Nothing happens to the actual transactions in that account.  Later, you can
go through the transactions in the "Unbalanced" account and move them to
where they belong.  In my case, this meant creating equity accounts to
properly account for my starting balances.

This is part of double-entry accounting, and helps your bookkeeping stay
accurate.

> 3. Is there a way to change the fontsize?

Don't know; I've never tried.  :-)

> 4. I'm just testing and probably I will switch back because gnucash does
> not
> prove to be reliable (gnucash fans don't blame me, I'm new and I can
> imagine
> this could happen). Is there a (tested) way back to money? Or do I have
> to
> enter all transactions again in money (this would mean I can give gnucash
> only
> a very short testing phase). 
> 

I haven't done this either, so I'll let someone else answer.  If you do go
back to Money, you might try GnuCash again in about two or three months,
after version 2.0 is released.  I think the list of planned improvements
includes budgeting and easier handling of split transactions.  IMHO,
accurate bookkeeping mandates use of a double-entry system; GnuCash is
probably as simple a double-entry system as you're likely to find.  

HTH.

-- 
Wes Sheldahl
wsheldahl@qx.net