Copying transactions from an account to the general ledger

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at gmail.com
Tue Feb 6 15:41:42 EST 2018


Mike,

See the replies by Geert and John.

The GL by default only shows the last 30 days of transactions. If the transactions you entered previously were dated more than 30 days ago, you won’t see them. Turn off the default filter first as they mentioned.

As John noted, be wary of entering directly in the GL. You CAN do so, but it’s not necessarily the best practice. Unlike other registers, it is not an account, merely a view of all accounts. Entering from another register, you can default to a split containing the account you are in holding the balance. The GL has no such option since it isn’t an account, you’ll have to be careful to enter both debit and credit lines before entering out of the transaction or you’ll have a mess of unbalanced entries to clean up.

For example, if I’m entering an expense paid with cash, I open the cash account register, enter my debit expense split and the register includes the matching split as a credit to cash already there for me. I also don’t have the option of deleting that cash split since it would ‘un-link’ the transaction to that register. This helps me enter transactions properly without mistakes. Normally, I use Transaction Journal view by default, but this is even more important if using Basic view which only shows one account split.

Also, please copy the list on all replies so others can benefit from the exchange.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Feb 6, 2018, at 1:42 PM, Mike Donovan <donovan.michael.g at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Adrien,
>  
> Thanks for your reply. When I go to Tools> General Ledger, I show a new line waiting for transaction entry. No other transactions are shown. Is it possible that I need to change a setting to get your (favorable) result?
>  
> Regards,
> Mike
>  
> Sent from Mail <https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986> for Windows 10
>  
> From: Adrien Monteleone <mailto:adrien.monteleone at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2018 12:59 PM
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: Copying transactions from an account to the general ledger
>  
> Mike,
>  
> There’s no copying anything to the General Ledger. The GL is simply a consolidated view of all accounts. Your transactions should be there. I just did a test with a fresh book, entered some transactions in Cash, opened the GL and the transactions were all there. I presume you are going to Tools > General Ledger right?
>  
> Certainly you can enter transactions in the GL only if you prefer. Personally, I like to enter them in the account the money is coming from to keep my entries straight. (some enter their credit card charges as expenses from the card liability account for the same reason)
>  
>  
> Regards,
> Adrien
>  
> > On Feb 6, 2018, at 11:15 AM, Mike Donovan <donovan.michael.g at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Having recorded many transactions to the cash account, I would like to copy these to the GL (which has no transactions currently) and then use the GL for recording all future transactions. Can this be done? Thanks.
> > 
> > Sent from Mail for Windows 10
> > 
> > 
> > 
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