`Balance' dialog box.. what is it for.

[Harry Putnam]

Josh Sled <jsled at asynchronous.org> writes:

Aside: Thanks for staying with it even though it seems I'm
increasingly being seen as a wise XXX or some kind of troll.

>> OK, I'm now seeing what the double entry stuff is like.  I don't care
>> where it goes.  Don't want to keep track of that.  I just want to keep
>> track of what is in the bank.  Just like they do.  They don't care
>> where it goes yet are quite capable of displaying my balance.
>
> Why are you tracking the transactions if you don't care where it goes?

I'm not sure if you are kidding here or what.  But the normal reason
for tracking a bank account is to know if you have money in it or not.
Its sometimes usefull to recall a specific withdrawal/deposits
purpose. Such as what one might expect to find in the Description field.

> If you just want to keep the balance, all you need is a piece of paper.

I'm noticing a tendency to really oversimplify what it takes to keep
up with a simple bank account.  One needs to do accurate math,
incorporate recurring expenses (automatically) have some minimal
record of what a deposit or withdrawal was for including a date.
 (The description field)

Nothing remotely like that happens by writing down a balance on a
piece of paper.  That assumes you've already done all the above.

> And once you do start caring, you really want double-entry to make sense
> of it all.

Yes, I can see that opens up a whole new and really accurate way to
see how your money is doing.  It would allow complex reports and
provide knowledge unobtainable in any other way really.

> But if you _really_ don't care, then -- sure -- just have everything go
> into an 'unbalanced' account; GnuCash will function fine.

That looks like what I'll do for now.  

Back to the annoying diaglog for a moment... if that dialog defaulted
to what was last used, wouldn't that ease just about any kind of usage
one put gnucash to? 

>> I read somewhere gnucash would be usefull for all levels of users.
>
> It increasingly sounds like GnuCash isn't the program you want, though
> I'd recommend you stick with it for a while and see if you like it in
> the end.   There are multiple UI affordances to ease some of the
> common-use-case data-entry conditions, such as:
>   * auto-completion of account names on entry.
>   * "in-line" creation of new accounts.
>   * import transaction-matching.
>
> All that is to say that you're in the hardest part of the curve, where
> you're creating a framework in which to exist that has all your specific
> data [accounts, names, mappings, &c.]  Subsequent usage becomes much
> easier.

Yes, I can see that already.  Even with my primative usage I'm already
getting on to some of it.