Startup questions - clearing things up

[tufkal]

Just making sure I have this all stragiht in my head before I go all crazy
entering in data. Numbers referring to questions I asked in my previous
post 'Start questions for new business'

1) Expenses:Tax catagories arent really needed since I dont cut paychecks
but I should keep them there for when I do my taxes next year, since the
taxes I will be paying on my income will fall into those catagories.

2) Create a Expense account like Expenses:Personal Transfer for when I am
moving money out of my business checking account to myself.

3) The one that had the most ideas heh. I think the general consensus is
that I should create an Asset:Inventory account and when the payment comes
in for that job I split the payment between Asset:Inventory and
Asset:Checking.  Wether or not I add seperate inbetween accouns to keep
track of product/service and COGS, the basic idea is that.

4) Manual entries of expenses from Asset:Checking -> Expense:Whatever
instead of using AP, with possibly making a Liability account in between.

5) Never got an answer to this one really (prolly cause no one wanted to
read that damn IRC log i posted lol).   I guess I just really need
clarification on what the Equity catagories are supposed to do.  My
retained earnings never changes, is it supposed to?  And what about the
Profit in the status bar, which I assume is conected to Equity in some
way, why is that always 0?  Read the log to get more info on what im
trying to say.