Don't understand imbalance

[Robert Heller]

At Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:12:25 -0500 stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com wrote:

> 
> 
> >New to GnuCash. Coming over from Quickbooks. Running 2.2.6 under Mepis 8.0 beta 5. I have a split transaction where I paid a credit card bill. The first row has the total amount in the withdrawal column. The split amounts are listed in the deposit column. The split amounts equal the withdrawal amount. The next row below the splits in the withdrawal column there is the same amount that is in the withdrawal column on the first row. I have other split transactions but this is the only imbalance that shows up when I open the imbalance account. Do I need to delete this transaction and re-enter it or can I fix it to get rid of the imbalance. Just guessing that the imbalance is not a good thing. 
> >
> >Thanks,
> >Harold
> >  
> >
> Imbalance very bad, something is wrong.
> 
> But I can't understand what you are describing. Normally paying a credit 
> card bill would not be a "split". You have an account of type credit 
> card (a sub type of liability) and you are writing a check (decreasing 
> the account of type "checking", a sub type of asset) and decreasing the 
> liability (you are decreasing both because assets and liabilities are on 
> opposite sides of the ledger). Though I could see that happening if you 
> were writing one check to pay the balances of several credit card 
> accounts. Tell us what are these splits. If you are trying to split 
> expenses, wrong. Those you record as of the date you made the credit 
> card charges (you paid not in cash but by assuming a liability) and not 
> when you got around to paying the bill.

I have a 'line of credit', and when I make payments, I create a split
that includes the gross payment (from my checking  account) and
separated out amounts for the principle, finance charges, and insurance
charges. Maybe the OP is also doing this?

> 
> Michael
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