Newbie: Transitioning from PHASAR

[linas@linas.org]

It's been rumoured that Dave Peticolas said:
> 
> "Leo L. Schwab" writes:
> > 	Prepare to answer once again the standard battery of Newbie
> > Questions, with perhaps a slight difference.
> > 
> > 	One especially cool thing PHASAR had that no one else seems to have
> > is a "unified transaction entry" window.  

[...]
> 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' :)

see http://www.gnucash.org/images/gnome-1.5/savings-journal.gif
for a screenshot.   (Although, dave, it kept doing non-intuitive
things when I last tried it.   Although I hesitate about complaining
about this just yet.)

(BTW dave, thanks, great work, I am quite impressed.)

> > 	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.

Some accountants like to have formal numbers assigned to accounts, 
and use these to fix the sorting order.  But that's more or less it.

> > 	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.

actually, you probably want to reconcile them against your 'fake
account', otherwise, they will continue to show up in the reconcile
window.

--linas