[GNC] Double entry directly to Equity

[John Ralls]

Well, Trading has special meaning in GnuCash: It's used for a set of accounts that are outside of the accounting equation used for tracking unrealized gains and losses from transactions involving more than one commodity. Those accounts are enabled by the book property (accessed via File>Properties) Use Trading Accounts and GnuCash manages them itself. You shouldn't directly edit trading splits. Either you're using it with a different meaning, which you'll need to explain, or you did something wrong and a recent update to GnuCash is stopping you from repeating the error.

Equity represents the value of the enterprise, Assets - Liabilities. Income and Expense are special flavors of Equity so most transactions you do are between Assets and Equity. If you close your book then Retained Earnings is the destination of zeroing out the Income and Expense accounts. The other component of Equity is the money brought to the enterprise by the owners/shareholders. If any of that is less than perfectly clear to you then you should study the Tutorial and Concepts Guide and whatever other basic accounting texts you fancy until it is clear.

Now, what is it exactly that you're trying to do?

Regards,
John Ralls


> On May 7, 2022, at 8:55 AM, Bogdan <sinovij at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Any suggestions there?
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Bogdan <sinovij at gmail.com>
> Date: Wed, May 4, 2022, 12:04
> Subject: Double entry directly to Equity
> To: <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am trying to figure out how to set up a  revaluation reserve account
> directly in Equity so that I could do e.g. Dr Asset a/c Cr Equity.
> 
> About a year ago I was able to create an account in Trading and debit /
> credit it directly from Asset and Liability accounts. However, now when I
> enter a similar transaction the Trading account (second leg of the entry)
> simply disappears and is replaced by Imbalance.
> 
> What is the appropriate way to make accounting entries directly to Equity
> accounts (not retained earnings through PL)? Any idea why the above
> approach no longer works?
> 
> Thanks!
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