Question about Gnucash tutorial

[Tim T.]

Ok.. this is what I do:
- create the accounts according to section 3.3.2, and 3.3.3. My
display matches with the pictures in the manual
- Section 4.2.1: follow the instructions for the Opening balance.
  For the groceries purchase, I put the amount 45.21 in the Withdrawals column
  Once again, exact match with the image in the manual

- Then comes the split:
  Click on empty line, then click on button 'split'
On the first line, enter Employer R Us
Click on second line of split, enter "after tax", select
Assets:Checking, enter a deposit of 670
On third line of split, enter: Federal Tax, Select Expenses:Taxes:Federal
  (At this point 670 appears in the Withdrawals column of this line)
  delete the 670, enter 180 in deposits, <tab> twice to get a new line.
  At this point 850 appears in the deposits column of the new line
  On this line enter Medicare, Expenses:Taxes:Medicare and the deposit of 90
  delete the amount in withdrawal again
  <Tab> to get the new line, with a Withdrawal amount of 940
  On this line enter Social Security, Expenses:Taxes:Social Security, amount 60
   Clear the 940 from the Withdrawals again
<Tab> to get the new line and enter
  Before tax, Income:Salary, with a withdrawal of 1000 (Which is
automatically entered there) and press enter

Hey.. this time it worked !

Ok, so what did I do differently from the last three times ?
the last three times, I did not clear the withdrawal column. And then
I wind up with an imbalance of 940
And some really strange balances in the accounts overview page.Also,
the deposits have gone.
I'd guess that my deposit gets subtracted from the amount in withdrawals.

I would call this a bug: the 'automatic withdrawal' should not be
taken into account (I'd agree that this is good visual reminder of the
amount you still have to account for).
A quick fix would be to add the warning about clearing the withdrawals
column to the doc.

(Also, I think the example is somewhat contrived: I'd normally deposit
1000, then use seperate transactions for each Tax deposit. The net
effect is the same. ;-)

Thanks for making me go through this again.. Always nice to be right:
I *was* doing something not quite right ;-)

TimT.




On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 15:12, Derek Atkins<warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> Tim,
>
> "Tim T." <tim.timmerman at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Apart from the email fail..
>>
>> I just worked through the 4.2.2 section of the tutorial using a fresh
>> download of 2.3.3 on Windows Vista again.
>>
>> Unfortunately, that doesn't work as advertised. Instead of the list of
>> deposits to the tax accounts, I get a list of withdrawals from the
>> checking account, and an imbalance of 940 Euro.
>
> Are you putting in the correct accounts for the splits?  Also, are you
> including the split for the checking account itself?
>
>> With tab, I can indeed get 'more lines'.. But the tutorial doesn't
>> work as described in the manual..
>>
>> Could somebody with more experience please check this ? (And explain
>> what I should have done ?)
>>
>> Thanks,
>>  TimT.
>
>> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>
> -derek
>
> --
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>