Why opening balances are in Grand Total?

[Colin Law]

On 25 July 2016 at 13:44, George Shuklin <george.shuklin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/25/2016 02:00 PM, Buddha Buck wrote:
>>
>> The screen shot you took seems to list "Net Assets: €3". Is this not what
>> your total assets are? No value seems to be listed next to "Grand Total".
>
>
> Oh, I've got it. Grand Total is just empty. OK, then my question is: why
> 'net asserts' counts opening balances twice?

If you transfer from Equity to, for example, Cash, as is done for an
opening balance, that has no effect on the Net Assets shown on that
page as the two cancel out.   I have to admit that I have not found a
use for the Net Assets figure shown there as it does not seem to
represent anything useful in the real world, as far as I can see.

Colin

>
>
>
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 6:00 AM George Shuklin <george.shuklin at gmail.com
>> <mailto:george.shuklin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     Yes, I understand this. Opening balance operations are listed
>>     twice: in
>>     'equities->Opening Balances' and in the corresponding asserts account
>>     (f.e. 'cash').
>>
>>     My question is: Why 'Grand total' sum both sides of such transactions?
>>
>>     On 07/25/2016 11:04 AM, DaveC49 wrote:
>>     > Hi George,
>>     >
>>     > Gnucash implements double entry bookkeeping. For every
>>     transaction there are
>>     > at least two accounts which are affected. for example if you buy
>>     a toaster
>>     > at the appliance store, it will be recorded as a credit ( or
>>     decrease in the
>>     > balance) of the amount of the purchase in your Asset:Bank
>>     account. The
>>     > second half of the transaction will be a debit to an expense
>>     account (i.e an
>>     > increase in the balance) for the same amount, e.g. Expense:Household
>>     > Purchases.
>>     >
>>     > For more info see the Wikipedia entry on Double Entry
>>     Bookkeeping, the
>>     > Accounting Equation or an introductory text on Financial
>>     accounting  and see
>>     > the Gnucash documentation ( Tutorial and concepts Guide) on
>>     splits, which is
>>     > what the two (or more) parts of a transaction are referred to in
>>     Gnucash.
>>     >
>>     > You can normally access the components of a transaction by
>>     opening one of
>>     > the accounts affected then double clicking on an individual
>>     transaction to
>>     > open the split. Additional lines will open below the summary
>>     line and these
>>     > will display the accounts affected.
>>     >
>>     > Splits can involve more than two accounts, for example when
>>     dealing with a
>>     > GST or VAT or sales  tax which you may collect on behalf of the
>>     government.
>>     >
>>     >
>>
>
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