[GNC] support for a new company

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 1/13/2025 6:13 PM, bullish bob bagley via gnucash-user wrote:
> b.  we started in 1989.  been with qb for decades.....moved to linux 
> and want to stay with gnucash., paid in cash is because i make a lot 
> of market mistakes,     net income--I put the ? there because I wasn't 
> sure of the net income and total equity showing since my bank balance 
> did not carry forward either---but the numbers do all add up 
> correctly, retained earnings is definitely in my qb version, as is 
> capital stock and add paid in capital  (my Sarbanes oxley auditor 
> asked me not to leave qb until after my fiscal 09.2024 yr end)  i am 
> impressed with gnucash and the people even more.
>
> the books of gnucash are just fine for my corporation.  I just do not 
> know how to set up the opening transactions.

OK then, NOT "new" but existing corporation AND you have an existing set 
of books under QuickBooks. You don't know how  to OPEN the books in 
gnucash (perhaps confused by the tutorial and reference to the shortcut 
method of entering initial values against "starting equity". Confused 
because for YOU (a stock company) equity more complex).

You do it the old fashioned way, from a Balance Sheet.

a) Create the CoA in gnucash with all accounts zero (matching your CoA 
under QuickBooks)

b)  CLOSE your books under QuickBooks (all income and expense accounts 
now zero). Run the post closing Balance Sheet. The only accounts with 
non-zero balances would be of types Asset, Liability, and Equity (again, 
because a corporation, your Equity accounts have a structure, not just a 
lump equity).

c) Create an opening transaction in gnucash. It will be one giant split. 
The debits will be all the accounts in the Balance Sheet (from 
QuickBooks) that have a debit balance and the credits all with a credit 
balance.

d) Run a Balance Sheet in gnucash. SHOULD match the one from QuickBooks. 
If not, if OOB, look for what you did not enter correctly. The old 
"tricks" for finding errors we used in the days of pen and ink on paper 
would be of great help in this case (an old accounting book dealing with 
"finding posting errors" to see the tricks). For example, if the 
difference is divisible by 9 you probably transposed digits (wrote 3478 
when you meant to write 3487 -- see 3487-3478 = 9       or 4387 when you 
meant 3487 -- see 4387-3487 = 900 which is a multiple of 9). There were 
a whole bunch of these tricks.

Because of the high likelihood of an error or two, COPY the all zero set 
of books, so you have a fresh copy to retry.

BTW folks, this is in fact the way I did it for all the orgs that pre 
fire I had under QuickBooks. Even though had simple Equity.

Michael

Michael D Novack