Just getting started...

[Jeremy Brown]

Terence,

You might want to update your version of Gnucash.  My understanding is 
that releases where the second version number (in this case 5) is odd 
are development releases and not intended for day-to-day use.  So you 
probably want the latest in the 1.6.x line.  In the Mandrake tree on my 
university's public FTP server, the latest version of Gnucash for 
Mandrake 9.0 is 1.6.7 
(ftp://helios.dii.utk.edu/pub/linux/Mandrake/Mandrake/9.0/i586/Mandrake/RPMS/gnucash-1.6.7-1mdk.i586.rpm).

A few years ago I migrated from Quicken on Windows to Gnucash on Linux, 
and I don't recall the change being too difficult.  There are some weird 
accounting differences (maybe some things like differences in 
terminology), but overall stuff is pretty much the same.  If, for 
example, trying to reconcile pops up a window with the absolute wrong 
information in it, my guess is it's just a bug in the development 
version of Gnucash that you have that's since been fixed.

Hope this helps out!

Jeremy Brown (jtbrown@utk.edu)

Terence J. Golightly wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I am new to gnucash. I am using version 1.5.6 in Mandrake 8.2 kernel
>2.4.18-6mdk on an i686 machine.  I used an account under assets checking
>and entered some transactions. 
>
>I tried entering an opening amt. for my balance using Income | Salary
>and entered a  months transactions.  When I went to reconcile a window
>popped up showing ending balance and no opening balance. I couldn't
>reconcile.  I tried changing the account that my initial amt 
>
>from: Income | Salary 
>
>to: Equity | Opening Balance
>
>Still no go. $0 opening balance. Can't reconcile. I tried starting over
>as well but without success.
>
>All I want is to keep my checkbook balanced every month. 
>
>
>I confess to not being familiar with basic accounting terminology and am
>not really interested in learning them. So when I noticed the "counter
>intuitive" way my balances were displayed I was thrown a bit. I can
>possibly get used to some of this if it can be kept to a minimum. I
>looked at the online documentation and wasn't impressed with it. I'm
>just starting out here. So please lend me your ear and perhaps some feed
>back, maybe there is a more basic package for linux out there that I can
>use.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Terry Golightly
>t.golightly@verizon.net
>
>
>
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