step-by-step guide on setting up small business accounting

[Derek Atkins]

"Jeremy C. Reed" <reed at reedmedia.net> writes:

> I look forward to your very first "Account Setup" documentation, because
> editing an already exist file (as suggested in the "Business Quick Start
> Guide") doesn't seem like a good idea. Since it doesn't explain how to
> create the Chart of Accounts from scratch.

File -> New File

Choose the "Business Accounts" set.

> I am hoping for some instructions that say "to get started click on ..."
> for each step.

The new file druid should do it.

> (We had tried to use the wizard a few different ways a few different
> times, but it never worked out to be easy to later add payments and bills.

Well, adding payments and bills is different than the CoA.  The above
should create the CoA.  Herman's page explains how to enter payments
and bills.

> For us, it is not intuitive -- probably since we have no accounting
> software experience to base it on. By the way, I currently do my
> invoicing via some perl scripts I wrote that generate HTML based on
> tab-delimited files which I hand maintain using bc(1) and vi(1); then I
> use html2ps and ps2pdf to finalize these customer PDF invoices. I am
> hoping to do this properly by using gnucash :) )

Well, could you explain what confused you?  What about it wasn't
intuitive?  What about it was confusing?  If possible I'd like to
make it more intuitive, but we need your help to explain how you
got confused.

> > So, stay tuned, there will be plenty for you to read, or contribute!
> 
> Excellent!
> 
> I'll be glad to copyedit and, once I learn the software, I can probably
> help write some docs.

Excellent!!!

> Thank you, Jon.
> 
> (Derek suggested reading through archives. This could take hours. It would
> be simpler to include the good documentation links from the official
> webpage.)

Well, a couple things.  First, the "Gnucash for business" page is
linked off the gnucash homepage.  Second, I was suggesting reading
through the archives to find the link to the "gnucash for business"
page.  Having said that, yes, "good documentation" should be on the
official webpage -- that requiring HAVING "good documentation".  All
the docs we've got so far as there.  You're welcome to help improve
them.

>    Jeremy C. Reed
>    http://www.reedmedia.net/

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
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