New user transitioning from Quicken

[Larry Evans]

On 05/01/2016 11:41 AM, Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> On 5/1/2016 1:53 AM, Leo Simon wrote:
>> Hi everybody.
>>
>> Like many users of gnucash, I've been using Linux for years and the only
>> reason I keep a windows virtualbox is to have access to quicken.     I
>> have
>> very much hoped that gnucash would allow me to jettison Windows
>> forever, but
>> so far it appears that's sadly not to be an attainable goal.
>>
>> I've read the section of the manual for transitioning-from-Quicken users
>> like me, but amazingly it doesn't address the most basic questions
>> that all
>> quicken users must surely want an answer to.
> Stop for just a moment. I think that at least SOME of your problems are
> related to your trying to see this in "Quicken" terms and so not having
> an idea of what reports to run to see what you want to see. For example:
>
> "In other words, I've been unable to get "outside" of gnucash's account
> structure, and see a date-sorted list
> of *all* my transactions, rather than see, individually, all of by
> transactions that belong to a particular Account.      To say it in yet a
> different way, I simply want to see a replica of my bank statement within
> gnucash."
>
> Let's take those two questions. In the old days of double entry
> bookkeeping you first entered transactions (both sides of them) into a
> book called a "journal" where they WERE in chronological order and then
> these transactions were posted into the ledger accounts (an error prone
> process; easy to miscopy an number)
>
> So ----- I want to see all transactions in chronological order means "I
> want to run a report that in effect shows me the journal (virtual in
> gnucash, but you CAN run a report that will do that).
>
> But the second question bothers me a bit. "I want to see all the
> transactions of the ledger account which is my bank account". Can you
> yet see "all the transactions" of ANY account? << why should the ledger
> account for your bank account be different >> Also bothering me "replica
> of my bank statement". I would NOT expect that to initially BE a
> "replica", and that doesn't depend on whether I am using gnucash or old
> fashioned paper. I would expect that MY records show checks written that
> have not yet gotten back to the bank and so are missing from the bank
> statement. I expect the bank statement to possibly have fees or interest
> that aren't in my records (yet). I expect to have to RECONCILE a bank
> statement to my own records.
>

Leo, you can RECONCILE using the Actions>Reconcile menubar item to do
the reconciling which Mike/Penny mention above.  However, I've also
wanted to have an account which replicates my bank statement.
However, to do that, I had to create 2 subaccounts of my placeholder
bank account.  That was a bit of a hassle, but it's illustrated by
the "toy" gnucash file here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4yftxu3ozfg8y6g/ClearFloatBank.gnucash?dl=0

RECONCILING with this method is also a bit of a hassle because you
have to transfer funds from the float subaccount of the Bank account
to the cleared subaccount.  You have to make sure the amounts entered
are the same; however, then the cleared subaccount exactly replicates
your bank statement.

I've also tried using the Actions>Reconcile menubar item.  I've not
made up my mind which I prefer.

HTH.

-regards,
Larry