Using gnucash

[Anthony Dardis]

On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 04:15:43 -0500, Md. Aminul Islam Khan  
<aikhanlab at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I had been using gnucash irregularly. Possibly due to lack of  
> understanding.
> Want to use it regularly.
> Should I:
> 1. Use the old file and continue from the present date (stopped using  
> them
> some few months ago and difficult to update all the transactions).
> 2. Export Accounts and use that as start
> 3. Create new file and start new.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> aikhan

The answer will depend on what you want.

If you don't care very much whether your file has old data, then just  
starting from new and learning as you put in your real transactions might  
be the best way to go (and the beginning of January is a great time).

If you want or need your file to have older data in it, it will have to  
get in there somehow. If the question is, should I use the old file and  
enter last year's transactions, vs., should I start a new file, but export  
the contents of the old one from Gnucash and import them back into the new  
file, I don't see any advantage to the latter choice, and it seems like a  
headache. If the question is, should I export from some other program  
(Quicken, for example), that actually works pretty well.

I would recommend spending a couple of days working your way through the  
Concepts guide, creating the transactions, seeing what happens. It also  
helps think about importing from another program, since it makes the idea  
of GnuCash, and the ideas of double-entry bookkeeping, clearer.