Expense accounts etc...

[Dennis Powless]

Thanks for the info....

Ok, here is some of my issues and I will try to explain.

It appears I have been using quicken quite wrong for the last several
years....  and this is my mistake and the reason the data is not as
nice in the import.

I had bank accounts, credit cards and some investments.

I also had accounts set up for bills like the cable bill and the escrow.

I didn't put the escrow in a special account just used a liability.
So, when it came time to pay a bill from the bank I would record it as
a lump sum to the mortgage company (no splits).  This works well if
you want it real simple.  Well, sometimes I would think I need more
info, so I would then do splits.

I would record (in checking) a portion to bank interest, mortgage
company and the escrow account.  (these transfer without issues)

Now, the ones that I didn't use splits are causing me fits....

It looks fine in the checking accounts, but in the escrow and mortgage
company accounts the transactions are not right.

I would then go in and record the transactions by hand without an
opposing transaction, I would just record it back to the same account.
 This does not work in GC, and it didn't import nicely.  So, I am
having to redo several years of transactions.  Luckily, it's not too
bad and is going well.

I do have an issue with transactions in the checking account.  I was
going to re-enter all the old transactions and do splits, but on the
other accounts they show up as unreconsiled transactions.  Is there
anyway to change this?  Or, will it mess up the reconsilation process?

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 6:32 PM, Yawar Amin <yawar.amin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Dennis,
>
> On 2010-11-07, at 00:15, Dennis Powless wrote:
>
>> I have just converted my 10+ years of quicken data to gnucash....  I
>> had quite a bit of work to get things done.  I have gotten the
>> checkbooks and credit cards all up and running, I think.
>
> Welcome to GnuCash–congratulations on choosing a Free Software accounting program. For answers and discussions, you’re in the right place :-)
>
>> […]
>>
>> I have several accounts that are not active like old credit cards and
>> some banks.  I also have a few accounts that are still active that
>> span this whole time.  Can I delete these old accounts or do I hide
>> them.  Do they still contribute to the networth etc….?
>
> You can hide accounts, in which case they will continue to exist with all their transactions–they just won’t be visible unless you unhide them again. If you delete them, then all their transactions will be gone, so that will make your data inaccurate.
>
>> What happens to all the money i transfer to the expense accounts (used
>> to be categories in quicken)?  Does this impact the networth? or
>> balances?
>
> Money in and out of income and expense accounts affect your net worth according to the double-entry Accounting Equation.[1]

So, right now I have over 300,000 in some expenses and rising, this
counts as negative balance or positive?  Somewhat confused on this....



>
>> I feel I have figured out this wonderful program, I just need to get
>> it to work for some of the older stuff.
>
> If your accounts and transactions imported correctly, it should ‘just work’. Try out some reports and set the date range to the past 5 to 10 years, and check out the generated reports.
>
>> I toyed with the idea of starting over from the last statements for my
>> accounts, is this advisable?
>
> You can do this, but you won’t have old financial data available for report generation purposes. You’ll only have financial data since your last statements. Of course, you can keep your 10 years of data in an archive GnuCash file and start a new file with your new data. Up to you. You probably want to consult your accountant for legal archival requirements (number of years to retain, when can you delete, etc.).
>

Ok, what I mean is I might go back to quicken and redo the
transactions with splits and proper expenses etc... then do an import.
 Might be easier than doing it in gnucash, I think?





> Hope this helps,
>
> Yawar
>
> [1] http://svn.gnucash.org/docs/guide/basics-accounting1.html#basics-accountingequation2
>
>