Beginner Issues with GNUCash

[Buddha Buck]

That is sort of correct.

A transaction consists of a date and a collection of "splits". Each split
consists of an account and a debit or credit amount. The governing rule is
that in each transaction, the total of the debit and credit amounts have to
be equal. This basic setup is true of any double-entry accounting system,
computerized or hand-done. GnuCash (and others) will allow you to attach
additional information to the "split" and to the transaction as a whole,
like memos, account numbers, transaction ids, descriptions, etc, but the
basic idea that a transaction consists of a set of balanced splits is
fundamental.

The key here is that the *splits* don't have a date, the transaction does.
So it's impossible to say that the PayPal account was credited on 1/1/2016
and the Bank account was debited on 1/3/2016 as part of the same
transaction. As part of two transactions, with some sort of holding account
in the middle, maybe, but not as part of one transaction. If you could,
then your books would be out of balance for 3 days, and that is just plain
wrong.

Your books should reflect your records, your view of how the world works.
The bank statement reflects the banks view of how the world works. PayPal's
statement reflects PayPal's view of how the world works. Overall, the three
world views, as they relate to you, should be in general agreement, but it
is common, exceedingly common, for there to be discrepancies with regard to
dates. You cannot rely, in any form, on the dates in other people's books
to have any relationship to your own. If your business processes rely on
that, they are always going to be in trouble.

PayPal issues transaction IDs, which can be used to identify a specific
PayPal transaction. If you can get that, you can add it to the memo field
of the split corresponding to the PayPal side of the transfer.

On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 9:38 PM soulrade <bosemajor at hotmail.com> wrote:

> And actually another big problem too, if the transaction appeared in the
> Paypal GBP 01/01/2016 and did not get released until 01/03/2016 to the bank
> for example. I will either end up looking for both assuming they took place
> on the 01/01/2016 or the other way around on the 01/03/2016. When in fact
> they both happened on two different days.
>
> So am I correct in thinking that this software in no way will allow you to
> specify or keep the description and date once for each side of the DR/CR
> transfer?
>
>
>
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