I think I understand now what you are asking.

TLDR; your GnuCash file **is** the General Ledger. GnuCash **is not** 
QuickBooks. QuickBooks has a separate view of the General Ledger because they 
otherwise hide it from you.


QuickBooks in particular, hides the double-entry nature of accounting from you 
with their home screen. They strongly urge you to enter transactions via the 
various flow steps that they provide and they really want you to use their 
workflow. You don’t make entries in the General Ledger, but in various special 
entry screens. But you can make direct General Ledger entries for special 
cases. However, they frown upon it. You can also view the General Ledger 
separately. (but you don’t have to in order to run a P&L or Balance Sheet, but 
that is where all QuickBooks transactions are officially stored.)

GnuCash takes the opposite approach and offers double-entry, by default. You 
don’t need to open something special, or run a special report, you *are* 
working directly in the various accounts that are part of the General Ledger. 
Thus, each GnuCash file *is* the General Ledger. It is the collection of all of 
your accounts and all transactions in them, in one place. There is a summary 
tab labeled “Accounts” where you can see balances in any account at a glance 
without having to open each one or run a special report. There is also a 
General Journal, which is the pen and paper equivalent of putting all 
transactions in one place, then later copying them to the individual accounts. 
(but with GnuCash you don’t have to copy them, you just enter them once.) Think 
of the various account registers as subsets of the General Journal. Some (like 
myself) prefer to work directly in various accounts. Some prefer to enter 
transactions into the General Journal.

An exception to this direct entry approach is the Business Features. While you 
don’t need to use them, you can, and they offer special functions and reports. 
If you use them, you should only make changes (with regards to those individual 
special business transactions) via their special windows rather than directly 
in the AR/AP accounts. But you can always view AR/AP at any time. You can also 
have ‘Other’ AR/AP accounts and make all the manual entries in them that you 
need. With regard to Bills and Invoices, you can do those manually, or you can 
use the Business Features. If you do so, you can’t edit the resulting 
transactions in Expense or Income accounts directly, you have to use the Edit 
Bill/Invoice window to do so. (but you can always view those transactions at 
any time, just like AR/AP by simply viewing the relevant Income or Expense 
account, they are in fact, the same transactions as what appears in AR/AP.)


Regards,
Adrien




> On Mar 17, 2020 w12d77, at 2:20 AM, Adrian Yong <adrianyong.88p...@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> Adrien,
> 
> In the General Ledger, every account has it history recorded and all these is 
> collated in one book called the General Ledger...
> 
> As I am used to QuickBooks and manually accounting methods, the General 
> Ledger is the basis for P&L, and Balance Sheet. QuickBooks seems to emulate 
> manual accounting.
> 
> Somehow, I have to generate a report on each account and collate them 
> manually into one collection..
> 
> Regards,
> Adrian
> 
> On Tue, 17 Mar. 2020, 13:39 Adrien Monteleone, 
> <adrien.montele...@lusfiber.net> wrote:
> If you mean you want to see the individual transaction activity in your 
> accounts related to a single customer, yes.
> 
> If you just want to see the balanced owed by all customers, you can use the 
> Accounts Receivable report. (each customer can be listed separately, along 
> with a total)
> 
> But both of these are entirely different things than your original question. 
> Which is quite fine, but please do clarify what it is you are trying to 
> accomplish so we can help you efficiently.
> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
> 
> > On Mar 16, 2020 w12d76, at 11:47 PM, Adrian Yong 
> > <adrianyong.88p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Christopher,
> > 
> > That means I have to generate a report for each of the accounts ie Cash in
> > Bank, Trade Debtors, each customer at a time ?
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Adrian

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