paycheck handling was Re: What to do after quotes for investments are in pricedb and paycheck handling

[David]

On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Steve Rodgers wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Two questions:

your second question first

> For handling paychecks, I use a salary dispursement account and transfer
> my gross salary from income:salary to assets:other:salarydispursement
> I then enter separate transfers from other:salarydispusement to expense
> accounts for taxes, and insurance; as well as asset accounts for investments 
> and bank accounts. I am currently doing as one transaction per entry, but I'd
> like to use a split transaction to handle it all on one entry. The split 
> feature seems to work differently than the commercial package I switched form 
> in that it wants to do override the name of the account first line in the 
> split transaction with the account name where the split transaction is 
> entered. What is the significance of this on the first line of a split 
> transaction?

A split transaction needs at least one "from" split and at least one
"to" split.

The first line showing in the split of the register is simply the
default 'from'.  (Maybe this was hidden or implied in your previous app.)

For example, if you are in your "income:salary" account, the first
line would contain the total amount of the salary as an "Income"
(Credit) to "income:salary".  Just go ahead and enter all the
disbursements in the following split lines (as "Charges" or Debits)
and when you are done the whole transaction will balance.

Next paycheck, just start typing the Description, press tab, and
gnucash will fill it out for you based on the last check.

Have fun!