[GNC] New User - 1st Question

[Chris Skudder]

Murray,
I'm treasurer of our church and GnuCash does a terrific job, I'd guess 
it'll work well for what you want to do. But ...

Taking your situation one piece at a time:
1. You should definitely completely uninstall the program you got from 
the un-trusted source, and scan your system VERY thoroughly for malware.

2. Install a known-good copy of the program from the GnuCash.org.
Get 5.12, there are known problems with 5.13.

3. To reduce confusion in these messages, let's define some words:
a. The PROGRAM is what you download and install. You can't give this to 
anybody, it's installed on your computer.
Your treasurer must also download + install the PROGRAM onto his-her 
computer. Best to get the SAME VERSION.

b. Your DATA FILE is what holds your "chart of accounts" which you've 
been creating- that is, income, expense, asset, etc accounts; and will 
hold your transactions when you start entering them. This is what you're 
saving onto a USB drive, and hoping to give to your church treasurer. 
This file is named something like "Church.gnucash" -- whatever you've 
saved it as. (BACK IT UP! Keep backup copies in different places.)

4. With those terms hopefully cleared up:
You CAN give the DATA FILE to your treasurer on a USB drive, or email it 
to them, etc. He-she will be able to open it with the PROGRAM they 
installed on their computer, and save it anywhere they want. You can 
pass it back and forth, BUT you CAN'T work on it in PARALLEL. That is, 
after one of you does something in the file, the other of you has to 
wait til they receive the file with your changes, before adding/changing 
anything more. Otherwise, you'll get some transactions in the 
treasurer's file + missing in yours, and vice-a-versa. (This is a mess 
and you have to go backwards to  fix it.)

Hope this helps. God bless,
Chris


*From:* gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org

*Sent:* Thursday, December 4, 2025 at 8:43 PM EST

*To:* gnucash-user at gnucash.org

*Subject:* gnucash-user Digest, Vol 273, Issue 14


> From:<murray at murraycomber.com>
> To: "'David Cousens'"<davidcousens49 at gmail.com>,
> 	<gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Subject: Re: [GNC] New User - 1st Question
> Message-ID:<00be01dc6583$ee1d48d0$ca57da70$@murraycomber.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Murray Here Again...
>
> I am thinking that I may have done something when I originally downloaded the program. I didn't download it from the GNUCash site...it seemed to complicated so I found a site that seemed much easier. I MAY have set it up wrong from the 'get-go'.
>
> ALSO, because this program, though it is being built on my computer was intended to have our church treasurer download the program on her computer then import the program that I built. Perhaps I should ask, Is that even possible, otherwise there is no sense in moving forward with this project this way. Because of that, though the program is on my computer and I was saving the data to a USB flash drive' perhaps that is an issue as well.