Entering a cash gift

[Michael T. Garrison Stuber]

On Saturday 30 August 2003 06:36 pm, DECo wrote:
> I am fairly new to gnucash.  I received a cash gift from a family member
> which I used to pay some personal bills.  How would I show this in gnucash?
> Regards,
> Smitty

In double column accounting money always moves from one account to another.  
In this case you have gift money coming in and expense money going out.  The 
question is, how precise do you want to be about tracking your money flows?  
I have an Income account named "Gifts" that I use for this sort of thing, 
separate from my Income accounts for my salary, interest, and investment 
earnings.  You could however, use a single income account.  It's entirely up 
to you.   If you deposited the money from your family in a bank account your 
money flow might look like this:

Income:Gifts --> Assets:BankAccount
Assets:BankAccount --> Expenses:PhoneBill
Assets:BankAccount --> Expenses:Rent

For personal accounting there isn't a single "right" way to do it.  Most of 
this really depends on how precise you want to be.