Jack, GnuCash has by default, top level accounts for Assets, Liabilities, Income, Expanses and Liabilities. These are also the names of account types.
All accounts of account type Assets should be somewhere under the top level Asset account and likewise for accounts of each other account type. This is necessary for the correct summation of the accounts in the generated reports and perhaps also may be necessary for the accounting rules which are built into GnuCash's coding to work correctly. It is likely your large negative balance results from mixing the account sub-types. Most of the accounting rules are enforced at the transaction level in terms of the sum of debits and credits being zero, and only being able to select certain account types in some cases. AFAIK the structure of GnuCash does not work in general with a general placeholder accounts with sub- accounts which are of different types. It may ,but it is unlikely the reporting structure will and balance sheets and similar reports are likely to be incorrect. A structure which will work better with the reporting system and in-built accounting rules would be to have an Investment Misc placeholder under each of the top level accounts. This has come up in the discussions a number of times usually with regard to a user operating a number of business activities where they need to have separate information on each activity for management purposes. It is even more the case that this will cause problems with the business features in particular with accounts payable and receivable Assets:Investments Misc:...subaccounts for each investment or investment type as appropriate Liabilities:Investments Misc: ... appropriate sub accounts for your needs Equity:... Less necessary to have the substructure here but it can help in defining where your wealth is held. Income:Investements Misc: Income:Investements Misc:Interest Income:Investements Misc:Dividends Income:Investements Misc:LT Gains Income:Investements Misc:ST Gains Expenses:Investements Misc:Fees A Expenses:Investements Misc:Fees B Expenses:Fees Then if you want to generate a report only about Investments Misc you would select these placeholders and their sub accounts in each of the top level categories in the report options. The above approach is generally used in standard accounting practice. Accountants also sort assets and liabilities into categories like current accounts and non-current accounts, the difference being that entries in the current accounts would usually expected to be settled within a single accounting period/financial year whereas non-current accounts deal with items which are generally held and used and consumed over several accounting periods. -- Sent from: http://gnucash.1415818.n4.nabble.com/GnuCash-User-f1415819.html _______________________________________________ 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.