disposing of splits

Michael T. Garrison Stuber garrisonstuber@bellsouth.net
Sat, 16 Mar 2002 18:59:05 -0500


GNUCash is fundamentally a double column accounting system.  The upshot of 
this is that you must have at least two accounts, otherwise your really 
can't do anything with it.  Everything you describe below will work, 
provided you create a second account.  What you end up with is an account 
that represents your checking account, and an account that you do all your 
transactions with, let's call it expenses.  You must have this second 
account.  If you can't bear to have it, GNUCash won't be of much use to you 
(sorry).

Change your checking account back to a bank account.
Create a second account.  Call it whatever you like.

(If you can bear to have three accounts, you could create one called Income 
as an income account, and one called Expenses as an expense account.  If 
you use the income account for all income and the expense account for all 
exepnses, you could see your total expenses and income very easily by 
looking at the account totals for Expense and Income.)

If this is too much, create the second account as an expense account.  I 
would name it something like "Transactions."  You can do all transactions 
to/from this account.  The value of the account will be pretty meaningless, 
but that's okay.  If you hide it as you describe below, you'll never see it.

Transactions must go between two accounts.  Typically, A split is when a 
transaction goes between more than two accounts.  Since you'll have only 
two accounts, you will never have need to create a split.

I hope this helps.

--On Saturday, March 16, 2002 02:45:43 PM -0500 Haines Brown 
<brownh@hartford-hwp.com> wrote:

> I asked this question some time time ago, and I'll try again. My
> simple objective is to get rid of any splits.
>
> 1. I was told to start by creating a new account. I prefer not to do
>    this because it would take a long time and open the way for
>    errors. So I need to modify my existing account to not use splits.
>    The account is a simple checking accounts with desposits and
>    expenditures.
>
> 2. I was told to make the account of the Expense type. I select my
>    account (not the imbalance USD account) and enter Ctl-e to raise
>    Edit Account dialog. In the Acount Type menu, I select Expense.
>
> 3. I was told to set all my transactions to use it. I've no idea where
>    or how to do this. I've explored all the menu options, and see no
>    place to tell transactions which account to attach themselves to.
>
> 4. In fact, in the Register, I see that my deposits appear in a column
>    named "Expense" and my expenditures in a colum named "Rebate." I
>    may have created this odd situation by stumbling around trying to
>    get ride of splits, so I'm gun shy at this point and afraid to do
>    more experiments.
>
> 5. I was told finally to set the account tree preferences not to
>    display expense accounts. I go to Options dialog, Account Tree,
>    Account Types to display, and unselect Expense.
>
> When I do that, my account simply disappears, including the
> "Imbalance-USD" line. I want to get rid of only the Imbalance
> line. Would someone be charitable and point out the error of my ways?
>
> Haines Brown
>
>
>
>
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