Newbie Qs

[Keith Iosso]

Hello
	I hope that this is helpful to others and educational to me.  I am
running Fedora Core 1 which has Gnucash 1.8.8 installed.  I would like
to switch to using Linux for my financial management.  If gnucash works
for me, I may be willing to contribute.  Documentation and coding in C
don't seem frightening to me.  This package seems like an awesome effort
deserving praise beyond my knowledge or ability.  Please keep this in
mind if some of the questions I have seem critical.  

Situation: I have been keeping records in Quicken for ~10 years.  I have
several checking accounts, several savings accounts and several stock
accounts.  One of the stock accounts keeps cash in it and the others
have linked cash accounts.  

History: I tried to load all my historical account data into gnucash
1.6.7 a year or so ago and it was a fiasco, due partly at least to some
hosed data in Quicken.  I decided this time to just load data for 2004. 

Gnucash started up right away and tried to help me.  Immediately I get
three choices: import quicken files, start from scratch and tutorial.  I
read a bit and find a recommendation that I import all my account data
in a single quicken file.  Reboot, export (There are choices about what
to put in the QFX data.  I choose transaction data and account
information since 1/1/04), reboot, import.  Uh-oh.  My table of accounts
looks nothing like the documentation says it should.  The initial
balances are 0 in all the accounts.  

Q1. Would it be helpful to offer guidance about how to proceed with
partial quicken data?
Q2. Would it be helpful to offer guidance about which quicken export
options to exercise?
Q3. How did I screw up that the import gave me a messed up table of
accounts?

OK.  I'll try to create the table of accounts first.  Hmm, nice druid,
clear docs.  Table of accounts looks good but has only one checking and
only one stock account.  

Q4.  Do I want to create several checking accounts as subsidiaries of
the one checking account or as peers (likewise for savings and stock)? 
Did I miss this in the docs or might it be helpful for the docs to
suggest what to do?  

When I create an account, I can set an initial balance in a second tab. 
I like that. Thereafter, when I edit the account, I cannot.  I have
already deleted and recreated several accounts so that I can create the
opening balance.   

Q5. Would it be even better to allow the users to change the opening
balance whenever they edit the file?

I decide to create my new accounts as peers to the initial accounts.  

Q6. Would it be helpful to be able to copy an account (at least until
some transactions are entered)?  I would have liked to be able to right
click on the checking or the stock account, select copy, then right
click on the parent and select paste.  

As I create stock accounts, I get a message saying that "You must create
a commodity".  I go to the commodity row and hit the select button.  I
turn out to be able to establish stock accounts by working between the
"Select currency/security" and "New security" dialogs, but I can't make
one that shows a balance of $0.00 like the initial stock account.  Mine
show a balance of 0 (USD).  

Q7. What is the point of forcing the commodity setting for all stock
accounts?
Q8. How could I create a stock account like the initial one?  
Q9. If the stock account that I have in the real world has cash
balances, can I use it as the statements arrive for me or do I need to
create an extra bank account to hold the cash?

Thanks for your patience in reading this and thanks again for the
tremendous efforts in creating this magnificent program.  

Sincerely,
Keith