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

[Eric Schwartz]

>The current thing that is blocking me is setting up a brokerage
>account.
>
>Create all the relevant commodities first (check)
>Create "accounts" for each commodity in the brokerage account (check)
>Create an account for cash on hand in the brokerage account (check)
>
>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.

I assume you bought these before the period you started tracking from?
In that case, I'm in the same situation.  What I did was to enter buy
transactions at the relevant dates and prices, and transferred the
money from the Equity:Opening Balances account.  Since I wasn't using
gnucash back when I bought most of the stock, I figure that's more or
less what it's for.

Mind you, I know jack about accounting, and even less about gnucash,
so I welcome rebuttal from someone who actually knows what they're
talking about.

-=Eric