On 3/11/2023 4:58 PM, Jamie Tolbert via gnucash-user wrote:
Its been a number of years, but I did take a few accounting classes in
college......so I have an idea of WHAT I want to do, but unclear on
HOW to do it in gnucash.....I will continue to fumble my way thru it,
the tutorial is rather cumbersome to read thru, for example, a search
for opening balances turn up several pages with OPEN and several with
a variation of BALANCEs, but not the account thats labeled OPENING
BALANCES.......if that is read only, how do I edit it to put my
opening balance in ?!?!?!
You do not NEED to use the opening balance wizard.
If you remember opening books from those accounting classes you will
know that "in the old days" this was done with a transaction (or
transactions). In other words, you can create your CoA with all accounts
starting with a zero balance and then:
Using the balance sheet from your old system, enter your first
transaction(s).
If a SINGLE transaction, going to be split on both sides, debit and
credit. It is not easy for a beginner to enter a two way split
transaction, so you could instead use two, one for the debit side and
one for the credit side so split only on one side.
If doing it that way, you won't likely know the amount for the equity
side of the transaction. You could start with that amount as zero,
split, and then begin entering all the debit (or credit) accounts, and
when you have those entered, the IMBALANCE amount will be what you want
to change that zero to. When you have done both sides, equity should
match what was in the Balance Statement you were working from.
You could also enter the amounts one at a time. In all the above methods
you would use something like "opening the books" to describe the
transaction(s)
The wizard is just a tool to allow you to populate your initial CoA with
starting amounts and that will use a special account under equity called
something like starting equity. It is just like doing it one at a time
EXCEPT you don't see those transactions.
Michael D Novack
_______________________________________________
gnucash-user mailing list
gnucash-user@gnucash.org
To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
-----
Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
