[GNC] N00b accounting q: opening balances

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 4/30/2022 10:32 AM, John Edward Hynes wrote
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>              Hi list,I’m very new to accounting and gnucash.  In setting up a hypothetical business, I have a question about opening balances:I entered $1000 in the equity opening balances account, transfer to current assets checking.  I also added the savings opening balance, and machinery starting book value, in the same way.Shouldn’t the open balances equity zero out after appearing in the “target” accounts correctly?  There’s no imbalance, everything looks fine, except that opening equity account doesn’t decrease.  Should it, or is this normal?Thanks!
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>   

Like Gyle said.

BUT I will add that since you appear new to double entry bookkeeping you 
should not skip over reading/understanding the tutorial and even better 
would be reading a "bookkeeping 101" type text. We can help you with the 
"how" but you need at least some idea of the :what" you are doing.

Gnucash is automating what was once a pen and ink on paper process and 
further, providing a shortcut for the simplest (but usually the vast 
majority) transactions << no need to enter first in the "journal"* >> 
And when you ARE entering journal style does the "posting" for you << 
this was a very error prone process in the days of manual bookkeeping >>

BTW1 -- kudos to you for setting up this "test" business entity as a way 
of learning how to use gnucash.

BTW2 -- Examples in a text will probably not show starting with "opening 
balances" but instead will show "opening transaction(s)". You can do 
this with gnucash also. Ignore specifying any opening balances creating 
your CoA with all accounts zero and then opening the books with opening 
transaction(s).

Michael D Novack


* -- you WILL in effect be using "journal entry" when entering a "split" 
transaction although this is more of a "view" since the journal is 
virtual. IF you are looking at a bookkeeping text to learn from, you CAN 
choose this view even for all transactions (even the simple ones) to 
mimic examples in your chosen text when they are showing entering into 
the journal << but "posting" you can forget about, THAT is one of the 
things gnucash is automating >>