Heidi,
Also, this sounds like a credit card being used for several purchases
throughout the month. In which case it is better to record the
individual purchases as they occur. Or, download the individual lines
to import.
In that case, you will have a Liability:Credit Card:nameofcc account
against which all the transactions will post with the other side of the
post (the other split) being the relevant expense account.
When you pay the credit card off, you record the payment against the
checking account on the one side and the Liability account on the other.
Otherwise, if you have a lot of purchases throughout the month there
would be one humongous transaction with gobs of splits and you would
lose the date for each purchase.
On 1/21/22 20:59, davidcousen...@gmail.com wrote:
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
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kg...@arrl.net
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