[GNC] General Ledger

[Adrien Monteleone]

I think I understand now what you are asking.

TLDR; your GnuCash file **is** the General Ledger. GnuCash **is not** QuickBooks. QuickBooks has a separate view of the General Ledger because they otherwise hide it from you.


QuickBooks in particular, hides the double-entry nature of accounting from you with their home screen. They strongly urge you to enter transactions via the various flow steps that they provide and they really want you to use their workflow. You don’t make entries in the General Ledger, but in various special entry screens. But you can make direct General Ledger entries for special cases. However, they frown upon it. You can also view the General Ledger separately. (but you don’t have to in order to run a P&L or Balance Sheet, but that is where all QuickBooks transactions are officially stored.)

GnuCash takes the opposite approach and offers double-entry, by default. You don’t need to open something special, or run a special report, you *are* working directly in the various accounts that are part of the General Ledger. Thus, each GnuCash file *is* the General Ledger. It is the collection of all of your accounts and all transactions in them, in one place. There is a summary tab labeled “Accounts” where you can see balances in any account at a glance without having to open each one or run a special report. There is also a General Journal, which is the pen and paper equivalent of putting all transactions in one place, then later copying them to the individual accounts. (but with GnuCash you don’t have to copy them, you just enter them once.) Think of the various account registers as subsets of the General Journal. Some (like myself) prefer to work directly in various accounts. Some prefer to enter transactions into the General Journal.

An exception to this direct entry approach is the Business Features. While you don’t need to use them, you can, and they offer special functions and reports. If you use them, you should only make changes (with regards to those individual special business transactions) via their special windows rather than directly in the AR/AP accounts. But you can always view AR/AP at any time. You can also have ‘Other’ AR/AP accounts and make all the manual entries in them that you need. With regard to Bills and Invoices, you can do those manually, or you can use the Business Features. If you do so, you can’t edit the resulting transactions in Expense or Income accounts directly, you have to use the Edit Bill/Invoice window to do so. (but you can always view those transactions at any time, just like AR/AP by simply viewing the relevant Income or Expense account, they are in fact, the same transactions as what appears in AR/AP.)


Regards,
Adrien




> On Mar 17, 2020 w12d77, at 2:20 AM, Adrian Yong <adrianyong.88park at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Adrien,
> 
> In the General Ledger, every account has it history recorded and all these is collated in one book called the General Ledger...
> 
> As I am used to QuickBooks and manually accounting methods, the General Ledger is the basis for P&L, and Balance Sheet. QuickBooks seems to emulate manual accounting.
> 
> Somehow, I have to generate a report on each account and collate them manually into one collection..
> 
> Regards,
> Adrian
> 
> On Tue, 17 Mar. 2020, 13:39 Adrien Monteleone, <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
> If you mean you want to see the individual transaction activity in your accounts related to a single customer, yes.
> 
> If you just want to see the balanced owed by all customers, you can use the Accounts Receivable report. (each customer can be listed separately, along with a total)
> 
> But both of these are entirely different things than your original question. Which is quite fine, but please do clarify what it is you are trying to accomplish so we can help you efficiently.
> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
> 
> > On Mar 16, 2020 w12d76, at 11:47 PM, Adrian Yong <adrianyong.88park at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Christopher,
> > 
> > That means I have to generate a report for each of the accounts ie Cash in
> > Bank, Trade Debtors, each customer at a time ?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Adrian