GnuCash Income - How to manage?

[Klaus Dahlke]

Hi,
I am not an accountant, but I here is whaat I do:
basically, I have four income accounts: salary, tax refund, interests/dividends, other income. 
So, when I get paid, i record:
+100 Bank, +100 salary
+50 wallet, +50 salary (cash payment)
+ 10 Bank, +10 dividends (dividend payment from investment)

But expenses not recorded vs the incme account as minus, but vs the expense accounts:
-100 wallet, -100 expenses-food
-120 credit card, -120 expenses gasoline (later on: -120 Bank,+ 120 credit card)

So, your income account(s) sum up and increase over time, your mothly income you'll get via reporting, not by looking at the balance of the income account(s). Whether you spend more than you earn (or vice versa) you get by comparing the income accounts with expense accounts,

By the above I manage to have the imbalance accouns always at zero.

Chees,
Klaus 


On Wed, 8 Jul 2015 10:33:56 -0700 (PDT)
SamuelHolmes82 <samuel.holmes6 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> I have been playing about with GnuCash.  I think it is an excellent program
> but I need a bit of advice on how to manage balances etc.
> 
> I know that GnuCash uses "double entry" accounting.  I know what this means,
> and I understand that there have to be two entries for a single transaction. 
> I get this.
> 
> What I am finding difficult to figure out however, is how to manage Income
> in my accounts.  Managing expenses is simple enough - I just have an account
> called "expenses", which starts at £0.00 balance, and fills up with entries
> as I record transactions.  Income, however, will be a bit more complicated. 
> Let's assume for the sake of argument that I will never know exactly how
> much my weekly income will be.  Therefore I cannot just create an account
> that has an amount X in it, which I use as my income.  My income account
> will need to be empty at the start of each month, and as I get paid, or
> other funds come in, then these will be noted in the "Income" account. 
> However I am not sure how I should manage this - given the double entry
> nature of GnuCash I am always left with an "Imbalance-GBP" account that I
> can do nothing to get rid of.  As I am hopefully being clear about, I
> understand EXACTLY why this account exists, and I know that in order to get
> rid of it, the imbalances have to be removed.
> 
> How then should I manage Income in GNUCash?
> 
> 
> 
> --
> View this message in context: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-Income-How-to-manage-tp4679348.html
> Sent from the GnuCash - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
> 
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