Transaction entry problem

[Alex Aycinena]

>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Ron Shook <shepvideo at aol.com>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, shepvideo at aol.com
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2015 16:44:41 -0400
> Subject: Transaction entry problem
> New User:
>
>
> I must be doing something or not doing something completely stupid, but I
> have a problem with transaction entry, that I can't for the life of me
> solve, that is driving me bonkers.
>
>
> Here's the situation:  Some transaction entries for Utilities: natural gas
> and Utilities: electric were posted to the wrong accounts, 3 or 4 to the
> opposite account in each account.  This happened on a transfer from
> Microsoft Money and was most certainly posted wrong in that accounting
> package.  I went into both nat gas and electric accounts and changed the
> wrong ones from transfer to nat gas and electric appropriately.  This
> worked for the most part except for one transaction entered after the
> transfer which wasn't a transfer, which I changed from nat gas to electric,
> i.e.,, it was a mistake that was made in Gnucash and didn't originate in MS
> Money.  After I tried to change the entry from nat gas to electric, it
> stubbornly refused to take the change and stayed in nat gas.  After trying
> numerous times to do this, I decided to delete the transaction from nat
> gas, and add it to electric.  After deleting it from nat gas and opening
> electric, I tried to add the deleted item there.  I fill out the new
> transaction registry item, hit enter, and what I have just typed disappears
> and is not added to the electric account.  Trying to do this numerous times
> has resulted in the same nothing happening.  An anomaly that happens when I
> fill out the new line is that the correct amount for the debit is entered
> automatically each time, if that would help in determining what I'm doing
> wrong?
>
> To make this even more confusing, when I do a transaction report on
> electric, every one of the failed attempts to add the new transaction entry
> shows up on the transaction report as a separate item making for an insane
> amount for total electric, yet none of these failed items is shown when I
> double click and open up the electric account.
>
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions for all of this.  I'm about to go
> elsewhere for Accounting software.  Nothing has been as simple and easy
> peasy since my first accounting software, Mac Money on an Apple II+.  I was
> really hoping that I could set up Gnucash to function as simply as possible
> as a simple cash accounting program for tax records, but this is driving me
> up the wall.
>
>
> Thanks for anything anyone can do to set me straight,
>
>
> Ron Shook
>
>
 Don't get frustrated. You're doing something wrong but it is unclear what
from your description. Someone suggested going through the tutorial &
concepts guide, which is a good idea. The fact that you say that you have
insane amounts for electric indicate that all the transactions you were
entering where actually being entered, you just couldn't see them. Which
register were you entering them in? If you use the general ledger (or
journal?) for data entry, that defaults to only show recent transaction,
although that default can be changed. What dates were they for? (If they
are for a date from long ago, when you hit the enter key, they seem to
disappear because they are sorted by date and go off the top of the visible
register). If you are in an expense register and change the expense account
they do in fact disappear from that register, but appear in the new expense
register.

Alex