Confused on split transactions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 11/8/2015 8:48 AM, dhight4 wrote:
> I'm new to this and getting real confused. ........
> When I try to split the transaction it always wants to treat one part as a credit, and the other part as a debit.
>
> What am I doing wrong?
> Or is this broken and what is the proper work around.
>
>
> Save the Republic
> Vote GOP in 2016

What you are doing wrong is thinking you can skip over the fundamentals 
of double entry bookkeeping and just "use" gnucash.

EVERY transaction has at least one debit and one credit (it would have 
more than one of at least one of these if a "split"). You just aren't 
seeing that because of the view you are using for entering unsplit 
transactions. But as soon as you tell gnucash that what you are entering 
is a split, it changes the view, no choice.

Understand? When you enter an unsplit transaction starting in some 
account, whichever side you enter the amount tells gnucash that for this 
account that's a debit or credit. Then when you specify the account on 
the other side of the transaction, it knows that's the opposite. It's 
not showing you this in terms of debit and credit because you chose a 
view (well the default view).

Here's an idea. Next regular transaction you enter, hit split anyway. It 
will bring up the view that confuses you. This time, because the other 
side isn't being split, just enter the account name (leaving the amount 
unchanged) and indicate that the transaction is complete. See, that was 
what you were actually doing in the shortcut view.

Michael