Transitioning to double entry

[Diane Mackay]

John Reynolds wrote:
> 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.
> 
I would choose #3 too, or possibly pull in the records starting at the 
beginning of the tax year.  When I started putting my records into 
GnuCash, I started my entries at the beginning of the tax year, and I 
did it this June.  So I entered about 6 months worth of data at the 
start.  It took me a few days to do, so it wasn't too terribly bad to 
bring in old records.  This will allow me to grab all my data for tax 
reports from one place.  Depending upon the complexity of your tax 
forms, this might be something to consider.  It's practically September 
now though, which is 3/4 the year, if your tax year starts in January. 
Might be better to just start fresh with future transactions, suffer a 
tad thru the tax season, and use the next three months to get your 
records comfy in GnuCash before the next year begins.

Double entry accounting is very cool, cuz any errors pop right out at 
you.  I love it.  I am most grateful to GnuCash for providing software 
that uses it.

Diane