Summarising bank balances

[Mike or Penny Novack]

John Bibby wrote:

>Hullo. I am new to Gnucash and I hope this is an easy question.
>
>1. I want to use Gnucash to track my bank balances every so often - I do
>not need or want to have to enter the individual transactions. I simply
>want e.g. when at the end of the Quarter I get my statement for Account X,
>I want to be able to put the date and balance into Gnucash. (If it sets up
>a dummy transfer that is OK.)
>  
>
Let's for the moment you mean "every bank statement" (monthly, 
quarterly, etc. . Doesn't your bank statement give you a figure for 
"total deposits" and "total withdrawals" (or checks) for the period? 
That could be the one transaction that you entered into the books. In 
the beginning of double entry bookkeeping the "temporary" accounts of 
type "income" and expense" did not yet exist so the other side of the 
transactions was immediately entered against equity. You could do the same.

>2. Then I will want to print a report  listing the account names and some
>details, along with the latest balance - and some totals.
>  
>
Those are standing asset accounts so you could use the Balance Sheet report.

>3. I want to be able to record some details too for each account - e.g.
>owner (self, wife or joint), type of account (fixed, ISA or whatever), rate
>of interest and any time-periods, etc etc.
>  
>
Not sure what you mean. Are you saying that where you define the account 
you don't have enough space for descriptive information?

Michael