equity fund accounts

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Marilyn Graves Kimple wrote:

>I went ahead and tested this out. (This is my personal accounts, not a business.)
>
>1. I set up my five top-level accounts.
>2. I set up my asset & liability accounts with opening balances, which automatically posted to the Opening Balances equity account.  (I can't see the purpose of posting to anywhere else, but my needs are simple and I am not an accountant.)
>  
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That's what "double entry bookkeeping" is all about. Have you read the 
introduction?

>3. I set up equity sub-accounts, for my own 'savings' accounts such as for annual expenses (like insurance & taxes) and to save for a car, a vacation, etc.-- things that will 'roll over' from month to month, unlike expense accounts.
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I don't think the brief introduction to accounting provided along with 
GnuCash covers topics such as "reserves". If you want to do more 
advanced things like this I strongly suggest you obtain a typical 
"Accounting 101" book.

>4. I then divided the 'opening balances' total between my equity sub-accounts using a split transaction.
>5. I can post directly to these accounts from an expense account (I call it 'accruals', but it is what is left over at the end of the month which I distribute between my 'savings' accounts) or from an asset account. No problem so far.
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That book will help you understand the differences in how you handle 
things "cash" vs "accrual" accounting.

>This does what I want it to do, and I can use some additional features like scheduling payments, reconciliations, and a few reports.
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On this forum we can most properly tell you HOW to get GnuCash to do 
some thing that you want to have it do. But not really proper for us to 
be trying to explain WHAT you should be wanting it to do. Seriously, I 
know you are saying "just simple personal books" but I think much of 
what you want is relatively advanced bookkeeping.

Michael