Questions

[John Ralls]

On Aug 24, 2014, at 4:28 AM, Andrew Ralph <andrew.ralph at me.com> wrote:

> New to gnu cash having a few issues
> 
> 1) I can't save my accounting files into a folder that is easily accessible! I follow steps to "save as" either in an existing folder or try and create a new folder and nothing is saved. The only place I can retrieve is either from the 4 recent files in "file" drop down or from "File"  "open" > Places> folder "/" and then scrolling down "Name" the multitude of .gnucash saved accounts (documents) and hope the one I pick is correct the number of these saved documents is getting bigger and bigger and things are getting increasingly more difficult to find. Also some data that I try to open comes up with an error message "no back end" Please explain how I can save my files to an easily accessible folder.

To navigate the folder hierarchy, double-click a folder to open it. To create a new folder, click the "Create Folder" button on the right side of the dialog above the listing, then type in a name in the highlighted new folder in the listing.

Once you have selected/created a folder for your account files, but before clicking "Open" or "Save", drag the folder to the sidebar and it will be available for quick access.

> 
> 2) How do I delete the trial and experimental files I have created

With the OS's file explorer: Nautilus on Gnome Desktop, Konqueror on KDE. Other Desktop environments likely have their own, but I don't know the names for all of them.

> 
> 3) I have created 1 file that has 3 different bank accounts for 3 different rental properties and one bank account that has personal income and rental information for another property. I have been successfully importing data directly from the banks. I have set up a customized account tree to capture income and expense for each property and personal Income. The financial year for me is April 1st to March 31st. Can I, should I continue to just add information chronologically and extract accounts specifically for this period or should I make a separate file for each year from April to March. If it would be better to keep annual accounts can I then transfer data already entered to a new file. I have been able to create a new blank set of accounts but again have been unable to save them to a common named folder see 1)

Transferring the balances to a new account file must be done by hand, it's a lot of work, and it's up to you to ensure that it's done completely and correctly; GnuCash can see only one file at a time so there's no way for it to check that you got everything. Consequently most people just keep using the same file forever. It has the added advantage that you can run reports for any period in the file. Note as well that there's a "close books" function that you can use to transfer income and expense balances to equity so that the running balance for the new period begins with 0.

Regards,
John Ralls