[GNC] rookie question Imbalance-USD

Mon Jun 20 18:30:30 EDT 2022

Sorry to have created such a row.
Yes, clicking the split does indeed show me more information and is helpful to a point.
I have made many blunders during this process that I am likely to pay for in time.  I paid little attention to the import account as I figured I would properly assign them at a later time.  Yes, I had used quicken many years ago, sorry.
I appreciate the information all of you have provided.
I have read some more about double entry accounting.  Again thanks.
That said, I have 3 cases in the Imbalance account.  All are discussed with the split line showing.  I hope that you can see the screen shots included.
a)  ones which are truly involving only one account.
these I am assuming they are safe to remove as no other accounts are effected.

......b)  one in which the transaction is showing two accounts and one of them is the imbalance account and one other 'proper' account.

The above is a credit card transaction.  In the double entry world, and if this were a a perfect world, the imbalance would be a different asset account.  In the real world, the asset account, not shown, does cover this transaction but is done in a single transfer of funds to the source CC account.  
I have reconciled all the CC card accounts.  If done properly, should the imbalance account be the source CC account?  
If I look at the CC accounts that I have made all the corrections, or imported more correctly, the transactions contain appropriate double entries, as below.

I think that these types of entries are also left over from imports not used or repeated.  They are almost all involving CC imports.  It would seem that these are also OK to remove.  They are double, and at times tripling, the expense account entries and values.......c) this one involves opening balances.

what should a opening balance be offset with ?  To me, this is a magical entry, and its source, whether credit or debit, is of no importance.   There is only one Opening balance account in the equity group.  In am starting in the middle of the year and the accounts have existed for a while there are opening balances for all Equities, Liabilities, and Assets. Should there be others ?.....
My background is engineering, the transfer of electrons is well understood.  Accounting, and its nuances, are not.
Again, thanks for all of your insight.
Kevin 

    On Saturday, June 18, 2022, 05:29:56 PM CDT, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:  

 The confusion arises when you use "entry" for both splits and transactions in the same paragraph, as you did here. 

On June 18, 2022 4:57:57 PM EDT, Gyle McCollam <gmccollam at live.com> wrote:
When I say entry, I refer to the entire transaction, but I get your point. 

Sent from Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------From: "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> Date: 6/18/22 4:24 PM (GMT-05:00) To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, Gyle McCollam <gmccollam at live.com>, David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>, Kevin T <nevikintx at yahoo.com>Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org Subject: Re: [GNC] rookie question Imbalance-USD 
Gyle,

Whether you delete the imbalance account or not once it is empty is a user preference. Some dislike seeing the imbalance account in their books, and delete it if it is empty. Others (like myself and you) leave that account in place. I leave it because it just reappears again later anyways when you miss an entry. 

Also, I'll note that you made a misleading statement late in the first paragraph when you said that "If he deletes the entry, he will delete it from the other accounts as well." In this instance, I think you meant to say "If he deletes the **transaction,** he will delete it from the other accounts as well." It's a minor, yet significant, difference in terminology. An entry (as I understand) is the single line within a transaction, synonymous with the Gnucash term "split." The Transaction is made up of two or more splits/entries. 

Best, 
David T.

On June 18, 2022 2:57:01 PM EDT, Gyle McCollam <gmccollam at live.com> wrote:
I agree that the matching step is critical when importing and the proper account should be assigned during import.  I also agree that the OP needs to understand Double Entry accounting better,  However, if he has "empty" transactions in the imbalance account, my bet is that if he clicks on the split icon in the toolbar, he will see his debit and credit accounts, plus the empty imbalance account.  When correcting the imbalance entry, he needs to open the split and click on the imbalance entry and change that to the proper account.  I think he added the proper account, entered the amount, then removed the amount from the imbalance account. Doing it this way you can't delete the imbalance account, unless you "jump" to one of the other accounts and delete it from there.  If he deletes the entry, he will delete it from the other accounts as well, which he doesn't want to do.
  You state that "Once all funds are re-allocated there should be no entries remaining and you can safely delete that account."  You don't delete the account, once there are no entries the account it is irrelevant and if you have it set to not display unused accounts you won't see it unless in the future there is another entry in there,

Thank You,
Gyle McCollam

Gyle McCollam

609.680.2326                     Mobile

gmccollam at live.com<mailto:gmccollam at gyleshomes.com>           emailFrom: gnucash-user <gnucash-user-bounces+gylemc=gmail.com at gnucash.org> on behalf of David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2022 1:59 PM
To: Kevin T <nevikintx at yahoo.com>
Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] rookie question Imbalance-USD

First, Imbalance-USD is not an expense account but a top level account, and
it is intended to be used only when an automated function is unable to form
a fully balanced transaction. You are correct that you can look under that
account name to find unbalanced transactions if and when they exist.

You might find it useful to re-read about double entry bookkeeping in the
various help resources. The F1 key should work while in GnuCash.

We never use the term "Category" to refer to anything in GnuCash, not even
"Expense" Accounts.

The fact that you are finding "empty" transactions there indicates that you
are not always deleting references to that account after re-allocating
funds to the desired account. Once all funds are re-allocated there should
be no entries remaining and you can safely delete that account. It will be
re-created if new transactions appear.

As you noticed, double-clicking is nearly useless in GnuCash. It does work
to change the sort order of columns in some windows.

When using an import function, GnuCash is trying to learn what Account
transactions have been applied to in the past so it can try to use the same
account with similar transactions. That is why it is important to use the
"Matching" step to correct account assignments before the import process is
closed.

Lastly, text files in Windows OS always use CR-LF, but other OS's mostly
use CR. This creates confusion when viewing text files in other OS's.

On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 11:54 AM Kevin T via gnucash-user <
gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:

 I have been populating my accounts with CSV. During the import, the tool
 doesn't have any existing transactions to match, so most of them get
 assigned the expense category 'Imbalance-USD'.
 I am to the point of making sure that accounts are reconciled and
 transactions don't have left over or bad account assignments. Since
 Imbalance is one of those expense categories I thought that would be a good
 place to make sure things are clean.
 I double click that expense category and the tab populates.Most of these
 entries have no value in either the deposit or withdrawal columns.Some
 do.Some even have a transfer account defined and values.
 Sooo.. the stupid questions..
 If they have a transfer account and values already specified, why is this
 transaction in this expense category?How do I find out from which account
 these transactions were originally created? double clicking does
 nothing.If they contain no values, is it safe to delete them?
 I did import a number of times, trying figuring out the import behavior,
 into temp or no longer existing accounts. Are these left over after
 deleting these accounts?
 version 4.1 windows.
 I have noticed that my original emails contain a ? for every CRLF that
 occurs, when the mailing list distributes this. I am using yahoo mail to
 send this. Is there a way to stop this ? mark 'feature'??

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