account organization

[Derek Atkins]

Andrew Pimlott <gnucash-user at andrew.pimlott.net> writes:

> Here's another reason.  Say I want my opening balances to coincide
> with statements dates.  I decide to start with my 2002-01-15 credit
> card statement and my 2002-01-05 checking statement, and enter the
> respective opening balances on those dates.  While entering my
> checking account transactions, I find I paid my credit card balance
> on 2002-01-10, which screws up the balance on my credit card
> account.

Remember that an Opening Balance is just another type of adjustment
transaction.  Follow Bill Wohl's suggestion -- every time you add
additional transactions prior to your opening balance, manually adjust
the opening balance to match....

> The answer is simply to pick the same opening date for all accounts.
> But I find that inconvenient for personal accounting.  I think most
> home users would prefer to use a statement date, so they don't have
> to compute the opening balances by hand.

Well, that is one way to handle it, but it is not (by far) the only
way.

The opening balance concept works fine -- you're just not using
it properly.  The opening balance NEED NOT match a statement...
That's what reconciles are for!

> Andrew

-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
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available