heidi, It would appear you don't understand the basis of double entry accounting which is what is used in accounting practice generally and by GnuCash.
The Tutorial and Concepts Guide for GnuCash, https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html, has a brief outline of the basis of this in Part I Chapter 2 as well as specific exaamples of typical transactions for checkbooks and credit cards in Part II. Wikipeiad also has entries for double entry accounting. There is also a detailed help manual which explains the interface operations https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/help.html. If you could read through the first part of the Tutorial and concepts guide, how to use GnuCash may be a little clearer and make more sense. Just a little bit on nomenclature. A single transaction always affects at least two accounts (sometimes more) and the sum of the debits and the sum of the credits for a single transaction must always be equal. When you buy something using a debit card, to record the purchase you generally reduce ( Withdraw or Credit) the balance of your bank account (an asset account) and increase the balance of an expense account (Deposit or Debit) associated with the type of item you are buying. ( the above heading names are appliacble for an account of type Asset but may be different for Liability,Income Equity and Expense accounts) The names in brackets are the headings of the last two columns in an account register display, the first in each being the informal headings many people use and the second the formal accounting headings used in accounting practice. Which labels you use is a used preference set in the dialogue opened with Edit->Preferences from the menu. You would generally enter such a transaction from the register for your bank account and it will have at least two lines. You can see the two lines for a transaction (normally only a summary line is displayed) by selecting the View- >Autosplit Ledger option from the menu while you have the tab for the relvant account register open. Clicking on a transaction to select it will open it as a summary line folowed by each split line. You will see that each line of a simple transaction has an entry in either the or DepositDebit or Credit Column (it is possible for more complex transactions e.g. where tax is involved to have more than two lines) and that the amount in one column equals the amount in the other. Hope this helps make things a little clearer. Come back if you have further questions after reading the tutorial and Concepts introductory material. David Cousens _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.