setting up mortgage liability and paying it off from a check account asset...

[prl]

On 11/01/2017 10:56, Morgan Read wrote:
>     ... nor does it seem correct
>     that I start of with a black 24,813.31 in the mortgage?
>     Oh, someone please put me out of my misery.
It's your choice how the balance in accounts is displayed. It sounds 
like you want to change Gnucash's Gnucash>Preferences>Accounts>Reverse 
Balanced Accounts to "None". This doesn't change the balance, just the 
way it's displayed. You can control whether negative amounts display as 
red in Preferences>General>Numbers>Display negative amounts in red (even 
if this is enabled they still have a leading '-').

You may also want to see whether setting Preferences>Accounts>Labels>Use 
formal accounting labels makes more sense to you.

Peter