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

[Robin Coon]

Eric Schwartz wrote:

> >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

Please forgive me if I sound clueless about GNUCash, I am very new to it
and just started subscribing to the mail list.  I do hope that with my
accounting background (dangerously close to completing licensing for my
CPA designation and I work at a large accounting firm) I can make some
contribution.

>From an accounting perspective, the transactions that are most relevant at
this time are those that occur during the current tax year (Jan 1, 2001 -
Dec 31, 2001).  When you initially set up your brokerage accounts, the
offset to the account should be Equity: Opening Balance.  So your "cash"
for those initial buy transactions to get your securities into GNUCash
would be Equity.

Robin