Greetings, gods (the developers) and mere mortals (the rest of us) Having finally succeeded in compiling and installing cvs gnucash, I've been creating dozens of accounts for everything that I want to keep track of and trying to figure out how to link transcactions to multiple accounts. For instance, I'm concentrating first on expenses since that is what I've been keeping track of most scrupulously in the old "ascii file edited with vi" system. Just from the last car repair bill, I note that there is a labor amount, a parts amount, a sales tax amount and an environmental tax amount. Yes, I could enter all these numbers separately in Expenses->Auto Expenses-> Repair->Labor, Expenses->Auto Expenses->Repair->Parts, Expenses->Taxes->Sales, and Expenses->Taxes->Environmental, but then I would lose the "one-transaction" aspect. How is, say, a "valve cover gastet replacement" linked to the 4 items described above, which are not really separate transactions? At first, it appears that having the "real" transaction in "Auto Repair" is an easy way out, but "Expenses->Taxes" is at the same level as "Expenses-> Auto Expenses" and even higher in the tree than "Expenses->Auto Expenses-> Repair", so sub-accounts only are not the answer. It would be easier and more natural to start with a "transaction editing" window and link from there to the different accounts. Is that what the "transfer from" field is supposed to achieve? I suspect that what the "transfer from" field is designed to do is debit the appropriate account where this money came from. Is this what a split transaction is? BTW, the pull-down list in this field would be clearer if the whole fully-qualified account name were displayed. I also notice that the widening of the columns (when the cursor becomes <-> on the vertical line between the columns) does not work. It seems that most transactions would affect more than one account, so there should be a way to do this, what am I missing? For instance (and this is admittedly US-centric) most mail-order purchases have the actual item (which can go into the account that fits it, ie: car improvements), a shipping and/or handling cost which has nothing to do with the intrinsic value of the item and is basically a service fee, and (if the seller has a presence in the destination state) a sales tax. Another typical transaction, eating out: the food, tax and tip. Another, stock purchases: the stock itself and the commission. Why should it be possible to keep track of things to such a fine level of detail? Well, for one, state and local taxes (and I presume this includes sales tax) are deductible from federal income tax and those nickels and dimes add up pretty quickly. Also, I want to know at a glance how much money I've wasted by paying for "services" that I could have provided to myself or how generous I've been with tips. Mmm... Just thought about something neat to take care of hidden taxes. After researching the hidden taxes for a specific item and locality (ie: gasoline) *once*, some configuration file could be set up to calculate what percentage of what you just paid (say, $20 for a tankful of gas) actually went for gas and what percentage went to "Expenses->Taxes->Gasoline Taxes" and gnucash would update the corresponding accounts automatically. As has probably become obvious, I'm not an expert in the accounting ways, so any assistance would be very welcome. Augustine Cano -- Gnucash Developer's List To unsubscribe send empty email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
