Newbie Question

[John Ralls]

> On Jul 7, 2017, at 10:54 AM, Paul Leniston <paulleniston at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I have just downloaded gnucash and am a little confused.
> 
> 
> I have two bank accounts, one in UK and one in Spain.   Do I need a differrent common account for each one?
> 
> 
> In the UK bank I have three accounts.   There is a current account, a deposit account and a credit card account. Do I need a different common account for each one.
> 
> 
> Finally I have two long term savings accounts at different banks.  Do I need a different common account for each one?
> 

What do you mean by "common account"? The placeholder that groups them?

Most folks group their accounts so that the accounts page summarizes their assets in a way that makes sense to them. For personal finances there are very few rules. If you want to see the totals by currency and bank you could do:
Assets
  GBP
    Bank1
      Current
      Deposit
    Bank2
      Savings
    Bank3
      Savings
  EUR
    Bank4
      Current

Liabilities
  GBP
    Bank1
      Credit Card

OTOH if you wanted to emphasize the holding term you might do

Assets
  Current
    GBP
      Bank1 Current
    EUR
      Bank4 Current
  Deposit
    GBP
      Bank1 Deposit
  Savings
    GBP
      Bank2 Savings
      Bank3 Savings

Liabilities
  Credit Card
    GBP
      Bank1 Credit Card


For pure currency accounts the GBP and EUR placeholders are optional, but for non-currency accounts (i.e. STOCK or FUND accounts) there must be a parent account in the currency used to price the account.

Regards,
John Ralls