[GNC] Help - entering opening balances

Derek Atkins derek at ihtfp.com
Tue Sep 8 09:05:46 EDT 2020


Hi,

On Tue, September 8, 2020 8:52 am, Chris Green wrote:
> I am at the stage of lots of rude words at the moment! :-)
>
> I am just starting to try and set up GnuCash for the PCC accounts and
> I've fallen at the first hurdle.  I can't work out how to enter
> opening balances for the two accounts we have - a current account and
> a savings account (which is basically the building fund).
[snip]
> So, ignoring the help system, how do I enter an Opening Balance?
> There's a section in accounts under 'Equity' for opening balances and
> I tried creating two accounts under that and entering balances but the
> result made no sense at all to me.  Having entered an opening balance
> I'd expect the balance sheet to show me that amount but GnuCash just
> did a decrease and a balancing increase in the Equity account which
> doesn't really make much sense.

An O-B transaction is nothing special, it's just a regular double-entry
transaction between the account in question and the Equity:Opening
Balances account.  You can create an O-B when you create an account, or,
after the account is created, you can just manually create the O-B
transaction.

So for example if you start with $100 in your Bank, the O-B would be a
transaction that Debit's Bank $100 (putting the $100 into it) and credits
E:O-B.

There's nothing special about it.

Happy Gnucashing,

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-derek

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



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