Beginner: Set up one account at a time, or all at once?

[Don Quixote de la Mancha]

On Fri, Oct 7, 2011 at 5:14 PM, memilanuk <memilanuk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just getting started w/ GnuCash on Ubuntu 11.04... I've tried using Quicken
> on Windows several times in the past, but always stalled out for one reason
> or another.  This time I'd like to stick with it, using GnuCash!

I was determined to switch to GnuCash because Intuit charges money for
government tax tables for QuickBooks, and refuses to calculate
withholding if your tax tables are out of date.  Further the
QuickBooks tax table file format is undocumented.  It Is Just Wrong
that they charge money for tax tables that the goverment tax agency
sends for free to every business owner at great taxpayer expense, such
as IRS Publication 15 (I think) "Tax Information for Employers" or
some such.

> For someone just starting out and *not* an accounting guru or even
> enthusiast, would it be better to just start slow with one basic checking
> account and simple inputs (net paycheck) and outputs (mortgage payment,
> vehicle loan) and then later as I'm comfortable start defining those more
> fully i.e. flesh out the paycheck by breaking out taxes, retirement, union
> dues, etc. and later still fleshing out the mortgage payment, vehicle loans,
> etc.?

YES!!!!!11111@@$$$!!! OMG PONIES!

I was very hesitant to use GnuCash for the longest time because the
Setup Druid makes it seem like one has to decide on all of one's
accounts at inital setup, and I did not know what they all really
should be.  Further I did not feel that any of the default account
setups were quite right for me.

It was only after spending quite a while working at building GnuCash
from source on OS X (which works now, but at one time did not), and
tinkering with GnuCash in a non-committal way that I reallzed that it
was quite easy and convenient to add accounts at any time.

You can edit the accounts, for example to rename them or to make an
existing account a subaccount of some other account.

You can delete them too.  If there are transactions within the
about-to-be-deleted account, you will be given the choice of deleting
all the transactions along with the account, or moving them en masse
to some other account.  If you want to keep the transactions but don't
want them all to go to the same account, you can open the
about-to-be-deleted account in a tab and change the accounts for each
transaction one at a time.

Start with the smallest set of accounts that make sense to you, then
add new accounts when the need arises.  You'll be happy you did it
that way.  I hardly ever delete accounts.  Sometimes I make a new
parent account then make a few other accounts subaccounts of it.

Ever Faithful,

Don Quixote
-- 
Don Quixote de la Mancha
Dulcinea Technologies Corporation
Software of Elegance and Beauty
http://www.dulcineatech.com
quixote at dulcineatech.com