New user questions

[jeffrey black]

On 9/29/2017 5:43 AM, Maf. King wrote:
> Hi Wesley,
>
> Welcome to GC & the list.
>
> On Friday, 29 September 2017 01:07:00 BST Wesley Vick wrote:
>> Greeting
>   I
>> have begin entering all my expenses since Jan 1 2017. I have finally
>> finished entering all the expenses and entered the balance of my checking
>> account. Here is my problem. All the receipts posted have already been
>> paid. The balance of my checking account is what I have right now. After
>> entering everything, I am showing a negative balance of $6,000.00. How can
>> I fix the software to show the true balance and that is what is in the
>> checking account. Can I go into Equity and maybe show starting balance of
>> the negative $6,000 or do I need to go back to January and start entering
>> all deposits that have been made?
> I'm a little confused here - you say you have entered everything, then you ask
> if you need to enter an opening balance and the deposits into your account.
> which is true?
>
> When you started your GC records in January, you should have entered an
> "opening balance", (probably dated 31st Dec 2016) - there is a box for this as
> part of the account setup dialogue box.  You would find this "opening balance"
> number on a bank statement or other doc from your institution.  If you missed
> this step, no problem, go ahead and create one manually.  You want to use
> Equity:Opening Balances as the transfer account.
>
> this step ensures that as of the first second of this year, GC and your bank
> agree with how much money you have in that account.
>
> Record all your expenses and incomes for that account, and throughout the
> year, the GC balance should closely follow the totals on your bank statements.
>
>
>> I appreciate all the work you have done
>> creating this software for there are more than 400 police officers that
>> work for this firm part time and they are a ll interested in this software.
> Great, I hope it helps them and they "get" the idea of open source software
> and are eventually able to help the community of us other users around the
> world in some way.
>
>
>> All I need now is to find software to track my mileage for my vehicle. Is
>> there a section in this software that I can submit a time sheet for the
>> work completed that will show the hours worked, time in, time out, location
>> of the security work performed as well as the mileage driven?
> I don't think so.  It is an accounting package, not a time-management tool.
> You may be able to track mileage using the stocks & commodities section, but
> I'm not sure if it would be a very good idea.  Speradsheets like LibreOffice
> Calc might be a better bet, or some project management packages.
>
> You could also see if the Customer/Invoice section will work, but it may not
> produce results exactly like a "timesheet"
>
> Good Luck,
> Maf.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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.
> .
>
Wesley:

I think Maf pretty much answered your first 2 questions so I will not 
comment on them.  Your third one on time, mileage, etc. well that can be 
done with a little consideration of the accounts you use.  The World 
Class Guru's that developed GNU-Cash went a little further in their 
development than they realized.  You can keep records for a lot more 
than dollars in and out.  And I am more than grateful for their efforts, 
especially at tax time.  Right now I am in the process of setting up a 
set of accounts to keep track of my cattle (shots, calves, sell, death 
loss, etc). GNU-Cash allows you to split a transaction out to many 
accounts, so long as all debits match all credits.  Once I got it 
knocked thru my thick skull that dollars ain't necessarily dollars, 
might be chickens to pay the doctor, a lot of unconventional and 
unexpected uses opened up for GNU-Cash.  Just don't show the reports to 
your accountant.

Before you even begin to try and set up a system for this, create a new 
GNU-Cash file to work with because you are going to make a specialty set 
of books and a lot of mistakes before you get it set up the way YOU want 
it.  You will probably want a separate file for this anyway.  You can 
always add other needed accounts as needed.

I routinely track my mileage for my farm use, our medical, and my wife's 
schedule C business for each trip for farm/business/medical.  Each 
purchase/doctor trip includes a mileage entry, in my case all tax 
deductible.  I have 2 accounts set up for mileage, one for each round 
trip, and one accumulated mileage.  In simple terms the round trip 
mileage is dollars and payee is to/from vendor/doctor.  In your case you 
may have to use actual odometer reading, like I hear on my scanner.  For 
me, accumulated round trip mileage is considered as an income account 
(love U.S. tax code, NOT) while individual round trip miles are an 
expense I pay out of pocket which go with each transaction.  At tax time 
I simply drop of the dollar sign and magically it is mileage.

You would also need accounts for start time and end time going to an 
accumulated time account.  Again, magically time is dollars.  o 8 
hundred 30 is $8.30 .

Location to is Payee, from is Notes.  Or you could combine them. With a 
little more planning you could even have accounts for beginning mileage 
and ending mileage going to respective accumulated mileage, with Payee 
to on start mileage and a return Payee on end mileage.

All of these go into one transaction.  Play with the report generator 
and get a report that you can hopefully turn in as is or with a little 
addition and subtraction you can put the numbers directly into the forms 
required by your department.  A black Sharpie to mark out dollar signs 
where needed?

Like I said, GNU-Cash was developed for double entry "money" entry.  
Money used to be beads, bear skins, etc.  Once you convince your self to 
think outside the box, GNU-Cash is an extremely formidable program.  For 
your purposes "money" in any pair of accounts can be any commodity you 
want it to be.  They do not all have to be dollars despite the dollar 
sign in front of them.


--JEffrey Black M.B.A.