learning

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Norman Silverstone wrote:

> I am about to help in setting up a small Company and would like to use 
> this application with Xubuntu. Could any one suggest some training 
> material which would help me set up the accounts ledgers and so on. If 
> it is any help I used Sage many years ago.  Thanks
>
> Norman

What you need depends upon where you are starting from. IF you know what 
ledger accounts you will need (you understand the accounting part, could 
do it the old fashioned way pen and in on paper) and JUST don't know 
gnucash peculiarities this is easy. After reading the provided 
materials, you can start with any of the provided skeleton books and 
simply change the names of the accounts to build the chart of accounts 
that you want and you can do that with no transactions entered. Then you 
open your books with one (split both sides) or two (each split one side) 
opening transactions. Just the same as if you were doing it pen and ink 
on paper except (like with most computerized accounting packages) you 
don't first construct the journal entry and then post to the ledger 
accounts but instead begin from any of the ledger accounts involved in 
the transaction (and the journal entry is implicit -- gnucash can 
produce "the journal" as a report).

BUT (very big but) if you don't undestand the fundamentals of double 
entry bookkeeping as would manifest for your sort of business then you 
need to start there with some book(s) on the subject that are dealing 
with this more level at which whether you are using gnucash or 
spreadsheets* is irrelevant.

Michael D Novack

* The modern equivalent of pen and ink on paper. Obviously you can set 
up your columns to mimic traditional journal and ledger accounting pages 
and proceed as in the old days except at least with the spreadsheet 
program you shouldn't have to worry about mistakes when adding numbers.