[GNC] I need basic help

[David Cousens]

I do agree with the comments in your previous post that the concept of
transactions needs to be explained before or at least in parallel to  concept of
accounts. I rewrote a fair bit of the basics section of the guide when I was
fresh out of an accounting master's which might account for its more technical
bias.  I haven't revisited the guide much since then but I will take another
look at it. It is always a compromise between producing a full scale textbook
and brevity that someone will actually read.

Some other accounting software does indeed hide the details of the debit/credit
and the accounting equation and double entry from users. I am a convert from
software that did that and because that basis was hidden it made understanding
the accounts more difficult than it should, particularly during the setup phase
of a business. Add to that my highly paid accountant (one of big 4) was not
particularly useful. That can be useful for a lot of routine data entry, however
it is the edge cases that often require a deeper understanding of the basis of
double entry accounting.

I disagree however that the non-accounting terminology should be the default.
The non-accounting terminology is often not precise in its meaning whereas once
you have understood the definitions, the meaning of the accounting terminology
and its use is well defined.  Accounting is a well documented commercial
practice and the double entry system is core to its operation and GnuCash is
primarily accounting software, not general financial software although it does a
very good job for small operations and can be adapted to that use. 

It is also an excellent educational tool for formal accounting. I used it as
such while doing amaster's and it produced basic reports which conformed well
with what was expected for formal accounting reports.

David Cousens


On Sat, 2023-10-21 at 09:48 +1100, flywire wrote:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2023-October/109184.html
> Edwin Booth wrote:
> > I need to wrap my head around the whole “debit/credit” concept.
> 
> No you don't but you do need to understand the concept of account types and
> moving money between them. I've studied economics at Uni, evaluated endless
> projects, used a range of accounting software, and worked with
> accountants and bookkeepers without being aware of how credit and debit is
> defined in accounting. I rarely used the terms, and most people that
> understood them would realise the common understanding is wrong and use the
> terms in a general sense or avoid them.
> 
> It's a pretty meaningless discussion commercial projects avoid to reduce
> confusion. The user documentation would be clearer with simple language:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2023-May/106929.html
> 
> Regards
> 
> > 
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