[GNC] Business Account Set Up Question & Customer Billing Question

[David Cousens]

Khristine,

Not exactly sure but you seem to be confusing the function ofg Opening
Balances with the contributions of each partner to the Equity in the
business. Opening Balances is used to record the existing balances in
any real accounts i.e. bank accounts held in your bank at the date you
start your books and is not associated with recording equity
contributions. 

The accounts Equity:Ram and Equity:Ros with their subaccounts
Investment and Drawing record the contributions to and withdrwals from
the equity in the business by each partner. I am assuming here that the
Equity:Ros and Equity:Ram accounts are placeholder accounts and the
appropriate Investment and Drawing accounts are subaccounts/child
accounts of these two placeholder accounts. 

Placeholders are normally read-only and should not normally have
transactions directly into them affecting the balance. The transactions
target the Investment sub accounts when contributing equity to the
business and the Withdrawals sub accounts when withdrawing funds from
the business. Each transaction consists of two splits each of which
affects a different account. For contributions to a business those
accounts affected are the Equity:<partner>:Investment and the
Asset:Bank:Checking. Note, you may additionally have a Current Assets
placeholder account between your top level Asset and the Bank:Checking
sub account depending upon your business structure

When the original investment by the first partner was made e.g. by Ros
the transaction splits recordes at the date of investment should have
been:
                                  Debit            Credit
Asset:Bank:Checking                720
Equity:Ros:Investment                               720

When the second partner ram made his contribution at a later date the
transaction splits recording that should have been:

                                  Debit            Credit
Asset:Bank Checking                720
Equity:Ram:Investment                               720

There should be no transactions affecting the Opening Balances to
record these events. The balances after these two transactions should
be (assuming no other transactions have affected the balances which may
not be the case for the checking account):

Equity                             1440
  Equity Ram                            720
  Equity Ram Drawing                           0
  Equity Ram Investment                      720
  Equity Ros                            720
  Equity Ros Drawing                           0
  Equity Ros Investment                      720 

Asset Bank Checking                 1440 

I have used offsetting of the balances here to indicate that the Equity
Ram Drawing and Equity Ram Investment accounts are parents of Equity
Ram and sum into that account for example with a similar behavior fo
the same subaccounts for Ros.  The two placeholder accounts Equity Ram
and Equity Ros in turn sum into the top level Equity account. 

The balances of the Equity accounts should be credit balances in
accounting terms with the exception of the drawing accounts which are
called contra accounts and will have Debit (or negative balances when
you withdraw money from the business). All Asset accounts on the other
hand normally have a Debit balance unless they are in the red i.e have
a negative balance. If this is not already clear the Tutorial and
Concepts Guide (https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/index.h
tml)discusses this. The Wikipedia articles on Double Entry accounting
and the  Accounting Equation and Debits and Credits explain this fairly
completely.

Disclaimer:
As others have noted you should consult an accountant for specific
advice which relates to accounting in your jurisdiction. The above is
only general advice on how Gnucash is commonly used in most
jurisdictions which conform with general accounting practices and
should not be relied upon in any specific jurisdiction as the governing
tax and accounting legislation could override that general practice.

David Cousens