[GNC] Setting up chart of accounts

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

On Thu, March 7, 2019 12:56 pm, Teresa wrote:
> I have 25 years experience in Accounting, however never set up a chart
> of accounts.
>
> I just started working for my daughter, who has done everything in excel.
>
> I have put all the gl accounts in GnuCash, but they all went in as
> parent accounts, I new term to me.

Have you tried using the default hierarchies that come with GnuCash?
That should get up set up quickly, and then you can add or remove accounts
as needed to customize to your situation.

> My question is, shouldn't these be child accounts? Also, do I set up a
> single of each Equity, Liability and Asset accounts as parent accounts
> with the beginning balances, and transfer to the child accounts from
> there?

Well, consider a simple account hierarchy, Expenses:Groceries.  In this
example, Expenses is a top-level account, and also a parent account.  most
likely it is also a placeholder account (meaning it cannot hold
transactions itself).  The Groceries account is a child of Expenses.

As you probably know, you generally don't set opening balances on Income
and Expense accounts.

In GnuCash, SOP is to transfer from Equity:Opening Balances -> <New
Account> to set up the <New Account> opening balance.  So no, you don't
generally go from Eq:O-B -> Assets -> Assets:Current Assets -> ... etc,
but directly from Eq:O-B to the target.

Hope this helps,

> Thank you,

> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek at ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant