Huh? Starting out with gnucash (new accounts, etc)

Andrew Wallace andyw@scroom.com
Mon, 18 Jun 2001 12:48:16 -0700


Ok, I guess the real problem I have is not understanding where the
money comes from so much as actually trying to understand how to
set this all up. I have an old brokerage account that I want to put
into gnucash. How do I do this? How do I say that "i bought 60 shares
of company A on 2/18/2000 for x dollars per share". Do I have to
create the account with the exact amount of cash necessary to handle
the dozens of transactions, then start entering all the necessary 
transactions? I mean, to make this happen, I have to enter  a lot of
transactions that are self-cancelling (i.e., I bought the stock, and
then sold it, so all I have left are the effects of having had it,
either profit or loss). 

My main issues are mechanical, not understanding things, I guess.
I underestimated the amount of work involved in getting my current
financial state put into gnucash...

thanks,
andy

Daniel Hagerty wrote:
> 
>  > but how to I assign the initial values? I have 60 shares of this
>  > stock, and 32 of that one, and I can't figure out how to put this
>  > information all in. I thought about putting "buy"
>  > transactions in
>  > place for each stock, using the correct date (that would be most
>  > useful anyway), but the money has to come from somewhere... THis is
>  > getting really confusing.
> 
>     This is what equity is.  The money comes from an equity account.
> 
> Equity means different things in different accounting contexts, from
> what I can see (I'm also teaching myself).  In the personal accounting
> context, you can think of it as money that you handed yourself from
> before you had an accounted universe.  In a more business context, it
> represents your shareholders' ownership of the company combined with
> the retained earnings & losses from last years books.

--
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         use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.

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