Accounting Help? (GnuCash 2.6.11)

Greg Feneis mfeneis at gmail.com
Thu Mar 10 18:28:20 EST 2016


Thanks for all the help, Folks!  I think I got it.





Kind regards,

Greg Feneis





On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 4:25 AM, Mike or Penny Novack <mpnovack at mtdata.com>
wrote:

> On 3/9/2016 8:20 PM, Rafael Sánchez Treviño wrote:
>
>> Hi Greg,
>>
>> OK. I think I understand better now. Do you use Equity accounts? If so,
>> you
>> may add one named "Dividends" and then credit it when you get money for
>> you
>> from the business (debiting the cash account). Dividends are reductions
>> from stockholder's equity, not expenses. I would use that if I have
>> retained earnings from past years (or the current one). And if you want,
>> you could use the option to invest in your business by "purchasing" stock
>> when you are putting money into it. That would be a debit to the cash and
>> credit to "common stock" or your equivalent equity account.
>>
> a) The reference to "dividends" would be for a public corporation. A sole
> proprietorship would be "owner's draw". I'm not going to even begin
> discussing the closely held corporations which may be allowed to account as
> if sole proprietorships or partnerships.
> b) But in the case of loans to the business, you need to check with the
> rules for your jurisdiction. You can treat this as a liability as far as
> gnucash is concerned. But your jurisdiction might consider that an increase
> (or decrease when taken out) of your investment. In other words, a loan
> that has "no standing" with respect to debt owed other creditors should
> things go west.
>
> c) Your confusion with regard to expenses? Both "Income" and "Expense"
> accounts are actually temporary accounts of fundamental type equity. In the
> earliest days of double entry bookkeeping (hundreds of years ago) these
> transaction were immediately entered against equity. That allowed net worth
> to be known at all times but all information about subtotals of income and
> expense categories was lost. Then somebody got the bright idea of first
> entering these into accounts of type "income"and expense" and only later
> transferring the totals to equity (see "close the books").
>
> Michael D Novack
>
> PS: The usual caveat, I do not have the "credentials" to be giving this
> sort of advice and you can't expect anybody else doing gnucash help to have
> those either. We should really only be telling you "how to do with gnucash"
> but not the "what" should you be doing.
>
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>


More information about the gnucash-user mailing list