Issues with an Opening Balance in GnuCash

[Tommy Trussell]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 12:14 AM, John R. Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net
> wrote:

> I have found pieces of transactions in 'orphan', and another account of a
> similar name, so a transaction would balance.  No warning, just gone.  I
> assume that the quicken data entry model is used to bring in the quicken
> users, including ones, as in my case, that use linux now.
>
> My comments were in relation to an accounting issue, not gnucash.
>

This part of your response makes me think maybe you don't understand split
transactions. I suggest you might work carefully through the examples in
the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide. It's available in multiple
formats, often as part of a separate documentation package in most linux
distributions, but you can also view the latest version on the GnuCash.org
web site:

http://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?doc=guide

When you find "parts" of transactions in orphan accounts, it means you have
not identified an account for the (required) split transaction. Note that
EVERY transaction in GnuCash has splits, but for everyday usage we
distinguish between "simple" transactions that only affect two accounts,
and "split" transactions that contain more than two accounts.

I think once you start working through the examples in the Guide you will
begin to see differences from the (superficial) resemblance to Quicken --
which I think many many accounting programs share.