Newbie: Transitioning from PHASAR

[Dave Peticolas]

"Leo L. Schwab" writes:
> 	Prepare to answer once again the standard battery of Newbie
> Questions, with perhaps a slight difference.
> 
> 	Background: Since 1994 or so, I've been maintaining my personal
> finances using an obscure package called PHASAR (Personal Home Accounting
> System And Register, or some such contrivance), running on an Amiga, though
> it was clearly ported from DOS.  Had it not been for the fact that the
> package was Y2K hostile (it still worked, but you had to go to extraordinary
> lengths to get it to work), I'd still be using it.  One year later, I decide
> it would be a nice thing to get the numbers under control again, but don't
> need another reason to crash back to Windoze.  So I pulled down GnuCash.

I've never used PHASAR, but I've heard a lot of good things about it.

> 	One especially cool thing PHASAR had that no one else seems to have
> is a "unified transaction entry" window.  Whereas Quicken and GnuCash appear
> to require you to open the register for a given account before you can post
> transactions against it, PHASAR's entry method let you enter a transaction
against any account at any time.  This made it really easy to go through the
> receipts in my wallet and enter them without having to sort them first.

The next major version of GnuCash will have a 'general ledger' window
for entering arbitrary transactions. For now, though you have to do
the 'register dance' :)


> 	Okay, so back to GnuCash:  After reading as much as I can find,
> including mailing list archives, I observe the following things:
> 	o Whereas PHASAR marked transactions with categories, GnuCash only
> 	  knows about accounts.  Thus, each category needs a separate
> 	  account under GnuCash.

Right.


> 	o Account "numbers" seem important somehow, but their importance or
> 	  meaning is not described anywhere I can find.

Not so important, really. In my own usage, I completely ignore them.


> 	o The closest thing GnuCash has to "standard transactions" is
> 	  cut-paste-and-edit of already-entered transactions.

Yes, though GnuCash will also auto-complete transactions based on the
description field. Memorized transactions is a todo item, but has not
been implemented.


> 	o I am in the habit of keeping a year's worth of transactions in
> 	  separate files.  However, there is no clear-cut way to do Year-end
> 	  Carryover.
> 	o "Opening Balance" in GnuCash is an aberration; I'm really supposed
> 	  to seed new accounts from a "Retained Equity" account, which I
> 	  need to create.  (Sub-issue: Do I need multiple Retained Equity
> 	  accounts for each "class" of seeded account?  For example, do I
> 	  need a separate Retained Equity account for every stock I own?)
> 
> 	Is that correct so far?

Both correct. You only need multiple retained equity accounts if you
want to track them separately.


> 	Another point: In PHASAR, I created a "phantom" account which I
> called virtual savings.  This account held automatic payments from checking
> which were never confirmed.  Since I'm a lazy schmuck, the idea was to let
> me sock money away for rainy days with a minimum of fuss; the checking
> balance reported by the program would be lower than what was actually there
> (this actually came in handy more than once).  When I needed to loot the
> virtual account, I would cancel the logged payments (checking balance
> "increases") and I'd write a check.  Will GnuCash permit me to perpetuate
> this illusion, or will I have to formalize it?

You can still make 'fake' transactions that are never reconciled, yes.

dave