[GNC] Newbie: Gnucash credit card payment transactions don't make sense

[Brad Morrison]

Hi Michael/GNUCash users, 

https://gnucash.org/docs.phtml - the GNUCash website has 2 main sources
of documentation listed, "The GnuCash Manual is designed to be a quick
reference of how to accomplish specific tasks and how to use the
features in GnuCash. The Concepts Guide is designed to be an in depth
guide to the concepts behind using GnuCash with a tutorial to show how
to put those concepts into practice." 

It might help save some support time in the future to refer, by
including a link, to the specific sections in those guides when
accounting topics like this come up on the GNUCash user mailing lists. 

That way, if there are any improvements or clarifications or edits that
need to be made to the GnuCash Manual or the Concepts Guide, we can make
those to the documents instead of answering each question individually
here. 

---
Thanks, 

Brad - https://www.facebook.com/brad.morrison.12327/ &
https://nextdoor.com/profile/01mP46jj8KCzj3sP4 &
https://norcal.social/@BradMorrison 

On 2025-05-26 14:48, Michael or Penny Novack via gnucash-user wrote:

> For some new users of gnucash who are also new to double entry bookkeeping the tutorial will suffice. But others will struggle with the fundamental double entry bookkeeping basic concepts. In THAT case I suggest.
> 
> a) Finding some entry level guides to double entry. bookkeeping. Gnucash is a TOOL that makes doing double entry bookkeeping a LOT easier than using pen and ink on special lines paper (either bound in books or "loose leaf")
> 
> b) IF you are having trouble with the "user friendly" column names switch to "formal" where the left column will always be "debit" and the right column always
> "credit" regardless of where in the ledger you place the account. The "user friendly labels" change according to the type of the account.
> 
> Assets are accounts that (usually) have a debit balance. << on debit side of ledger >>
> 
> Liabilities are accounts that (usually) have a credit balance <on credit side of ledger >>
> 
> Equity accounts  (usually) have a credit balance. Income and Expense accounts are temporary accounts of fundamental type Equity (closing into Equity being deferred). Expenses normally debit and Income credit (so expenses decrease equity, make it less credit, and income increases equity, makes it more credit. With gnucash you can defer closing indefinitely as it can produce reports "as if you did".
> 
> If this debit/credit thing seems strange, double entry bookkeeping is older than negative numbers in European math. So the "senses" are debit/credit, only addition used as opposed to plus/minus with both addition and subtraction.
> 
> Michael D Novack
> 
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