Transitioning to double entry

[John Reynolds]

On Wednesday 27 August 2003 02:09 pm, Wes Gray wrote:
> A year ago I exported my Quicken data and imported into Gnucash, but
> I didn't quite "get" double-entry, so I just created 5 or so accounts
> plus a Misc account and made every transaction to or from Misc.  Now,
> with some experience under my belt, I would like to transition to
> using double entry correctly.  So I ran the new file druid and created
> a nice account tree, then hacked that into my current file, then moved
> my current accounts into where they belonged in the tree.  Now I am
> confused as to how to best proceed.  I can think of a few options:
>
> 1. Do nothing to the old transactions.  The problem with this approach
> is that then I will still have this big Misc account, and it will throw
> off all future reports (if I understand things correctly).
>
> 2. Go through all my old reconciled transactions and change the to/from
> account from Misc to a valid account.  Problem is, the data is several
> years old and for many of them it is hard to tell what the transactions
> were.  I could fix up the obvious ones and label the unknown ones as
> Misc Expenses, but then that big Misc Expense account has a similar problem
> as option #1 above.
>
> 3. Start over from scratch, without my old data.  I would miss my old data,
> but I could keep it around for reference.
>
> I am leaning toward option #3, but maybe I am missing something.  How would
> this best be handled?

I agree with you... #3 is the choice I would make, but I would probably add a 
little of #1 also, go back a month or two and use that as the starting point. 
July 1st 2003 would be a good date.

Of course it is all up to you and your preferance, and the amount of time you 
want to spend.

John R.

>
> Thanks,
>
> -Wes
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