Split Confusion

[John Ralls]

On Dec 13, 2009, at 1:58 PM, Leak, Thomas B wrote:

> Hi.  I am new to GnuCash and need a little newbie help.  I want to enter a transaction from Target for $140.  $40 of the transaction is Expenses:Clothing and the rest is Expenses:Groceries.  In other apps, you would enter the entire amount and then hit a split button that would allow you to allocate the expense into the correct categories insuring that the splits add up to the grand total.  The grand total would just come out of the checking account balance.  How can I do this in GnuCash?
> 
> It looks like it wants me to enter a deposit and withdrawal.  Sorry, I am confused.
> _______________________________________________


No, it wants you to enter *either* a deposit *or* a withdrawal. Since you're paying Target, it will be a withdrawal:

Create the basic transaction and select "Expenses:Clothing" for the "Transfer" column and enter the total amount in the "Withdrawal" column.

Push the "Split" button in the toolbar or select Actions>Split Transaction from the menu.
This will open the entry up to show several lines, showing the affected accounts and the amounts allotted to each. It will also change the headings on the colums: "Transfer" becomes "Account", "Deposit" becomes "Tot Deposit", and "Withdrawal" becomes "Tot Withdra".

Reduce the amount on the Expenses:Clothing line to what you spent on clothing and either Tab to or click in the blank line at the bottom. This will immediately change to the difference between the amounts in the two columns, so you can just select Expenses:Groceries in the Account column and hit return. Make sure that everything is right and press return again to exit split mode and proceed to the next transaction.

Regards,
John Ralls