Why does it...

[Matthew Vanecek]

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On Sun, 2002-12-01 at 22:39, Reinke Bonte wrote:
> Hello Karl,
>=20
> you seem to have problems with the double entry bookkeeping. I found it
> very helpful to read the online manual, it explains these accounting
> concepts very well. Once I got used to double entry accounting, I found
> it very helpful for detecting entry errors and producing meaningful
> reports. An additional benefit of understanding double entry accounting
> for you could be, that you can trust your two "college trained
> accountants" because you would have a better idea of what they are
> doing.
>=20

That was going to be my suggestion, too.  All you really need to do, in
Gnucash, is have a source account and a destination account.  Money
moves from source to destination.  E.g., from Assets:Bank to
Expenses:Clothing.  Or from Assets:Bank to Liabilities:Mortgage.  That's
the nature of double-entry accounting, which is what Gnucash strives to
do.  In a register, the left column always increases the balance of the
account, and the right column always decreases.  You can set the column
labels to reflect either accounting terminology (Debit, Credit), or
debatably easier-to-understand layman's terms (Increase, Decrease,
etc).  This setting is done in Preferences.

A person in your apparent position should be familiar with accounting
practices, anyhow.  Not to a CPA level, surely, but at least enough to
make sure everything looks square on the books.  That same knowledge
applies to personal finance.

Once you get into the groove of double-entry, tracking your personal
expenses becomes much clearer.  Of course, you could always hire an
accountant to do everything for you....
--=20
Matthew Vanecek
perl -e 'print $i=3Dpack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
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*****
For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except=
 me.
I'm always getting in the way of something...

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