restarting

[Fred Bone]

On 29 June 2010 at 19:46, Rob Cussons said:

> Hi,
> 
> I've been rather remiss in keeping my accounts up to date and so I really
> want to start again from scratch but want to keep the same accounts and
> categories, just without any of the transactions, is there an easy way to
> do this?
> 
> The thing that made me get behind and eventually give up is that I have
> various deductions from my gross pay which go into things such as share
> schemes, I don't know how to set up a share account and how I would link
> this to my salary being paid in.

If you mean a savings-related-share-option-scheme or the like, then the 
money is actually going, for now, to a cash account, which you can use at 
some future date to buy shares.

I would set up several sub-accounts (one for each such agreement). You 
could put them under a common parent ("Assets:Investments:Share schemes", 
perhaps). As each one matures, you'd have a transaction to it from (say) 
Income:Interest. Then if you choose to buy shares with it, it's no 
different from buying them out of your current account except for the 
source of funds.

Read the "Tutorial and Concepts Guide", "Investments" to see how to 
handle share accounts - you need one per type of share. (The Guide uses 
American terminology, but it's not hard to translate).