On 4/10/2024 7:11 PM, Kevin Wilcoxon via gnucash-user wrote:
Thank you both for your responses. I see I have been using the term
"split transaction" wrong. I was using Ace Money where this term was
used to signify a single transaction, say from the Checking Account,
to two different categories, say Household and Groceries. Is there a
term for this in GnuCash and can it be done here?
Thanks Again
Kevin
Yes, that is a useful way to think of "split" in gnucash. The credit
side of the transaction involves just one account, Checking, but the
debit side involves two, Household and Groceries.
When "split" on only one side, start with the other account, in this
case Checking. You begin entering the usual way (what I call the
shortcut) and then hit the "split" button. What that does is switch you
to journal mode for this transaction. It will have that first account
and amount filled in and have that amount on the debit side with account
Imbalance. On THAT line you change the account to be one of the debits
AND CHANGE THE AMOUNT to what it would be for that account. Now the
remainder shows up on the next line account Imbalance. You change that
to the correct second account. You should now not have anything left
Imbalance. After you hit to enter the transaction your view will switch
back to normal "shortcut" view << in the ledger account were you began >>
BUT --- you could have asked gnucash to show you all in journal view
(could enter all transactions that way). That's why I suggest if totally
new to double entry bookkeeping might be a good way to begin. The
"shortcut" gnucash is using is what we (in pen and ink on paper days)
used to call "cashbook accounting" where a small subset of the ledger,
including "cash" (checking) plus the other most popular accounts
bypassed entering in the journal << and say at the bottom of each page
the totals entered into the main ledger >> If we did "cashbook" (for the
most popular subset) what gnucash is doing is very familiar to us,
except covering all accounts << we were limited by the width a the
widest accounting paper, usually 12 columns >>
Michael D Novack
PS -- That's why adjustment transactions not involving cash were called
"journal transactions" as they could not be entered into the cashbook
subset ledger. Note that folks who are coming to gnucash from using
spreadsheets (columns like accounting paper) might have used less
limited "cashbook" since the spreadsheet could have a lot more columns
than a physical paper page.
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