bank entries

[DaveC49]

Christine,

Gnucash is a double entry accounting system.  What this means is that any
transaction affects at least two accounts. For example when you purchase
something your bank account is credited by the amount of the purchase any
purchase is also an expense so an expense account has to be debited by the
amount of the purchase in the second component of the transaction. These two
components of the one transactions are referred to in Gnucash as "splits".
The same methodology is applied to any other sort of transaction, it will
always consist of at least two components ( and sometimes more) affecting at
least two accounts. In any single transaction the sum of the debit and the
sum of the credit components of the splits of that transaction must be equal

The Gnucash Tutorial and Concepts guide
(https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/) along with the
Wikipedia articles on double entry bookkeeping
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-entry_bookkeeping_system will give you
some background information. Gnucash follows what is called the Accounting
Equation or American approach in this article. The article on the Accounting
equation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_equation) also provides
some useful background.

That said, it is possible when you are entering a transaction and create the
deposit split to your bank account (this will be a debit to that account if
you use the accounting terms) what you are seeing is the other
component/split of the transaction being automatically created. If you have
not yet created  appropriate income accounts, it may be assigning your bank
account as the default account for this second split which will be  a
credit. If you click in the account field in the second split, you should be
able to select a different account from your chart of accounts. 

For a deposit to your bank account, the account for the second split would
normally be an income account for money coming from an external source or
another asset account if you are transferring money between accounts ofr
example.


David



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David Cousens
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