Some basic 2.01 questions...

[Maf. King]

On Thursday 09 November 2006 19:12, Brian Keener wrote:

Hi Brian

> Actually, it's probably more of a "double-entry accounting" question...
>
> So I've got the basics down so far; every payday, I transfer money from
> "Income:Salary" to my main checking account, and as I pay bills/write
> checks I transfer money from checking to expense:auto:gas etc. etc. etc.
>
> Now, that leaves me with ever-increasing values in my expenses columns and
> income columns, which looks a little strange to me.  That's pretty much to
> be expected, I assume?
Yep.

>
> But what about a few months/years/whatever down the road, is it really
> useful to know I spent $15,823 in gasoline since November 2006?  Can those
> values be filtered so that only the last month or so shows up?
>

Probably not in that case, but may be useful for tracking gains on investments 
etc?
AFAIK, you can't filter the main accounts tree, but you can date-limit the 
register views.

What I do for my personal accounts is start with a blank set of accounts at 
the start of each tax year - called "book closing" in accountant-speak.  It 
has been discussed several times on this list, but not since GC 2.0 was 
released (that I remember, anyway).

Book closing isn't in GC yet, but I believe it is under development.


HTH,
Maf.