Chris & Michael have both offered sound advice.
I'll add towards your question of individual item tracking, simply
create sub-accounts under Assets:Fixed Assets for each one, and the
parent Fixed Assets should be empty.
And no, they don't belong under Equity, they are Assets. The other side
of those transactions goes to Equity. (and then to Expenses for later
Depreciation as Chris noted)
Regards,
Adrien
On 1/16/23 6:29 AM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
Apologies if this is too much an accounting question, but I'm stuck, and am
trying to work out how GnuCash will handle this.
I'm trying to enter into GnuCash my company accounts for this financial
year only - I'm not going to bother trying to enter every transaction since
the company started. So the opening balances should reflect the company's
financial position on 28/2/2022, and transactions from 1/3/22 being
recorded.
I have the account
Assets:Fixed Assets
All that contains is test equipment and computer equipment, all of which
will be depreciated - there's no land, or other things that don't
depreciate.
I initially set Assets:Fixed Assets to have an opening balance of £x, as
that's what my accountant told me the total of all thef fixed assets was
worth. I see that is reflected in the account
Equity:Opening Balances
However, after I asked him, my accountant gave me a breakdown of the net
value of the individual fixed assets, which have obviously depreciated over
time. I thought it would be useful to have their individual net values on
28/2/2022 recorded in GnuCash, so when I depreciate them next year, I can
keep a track of the depreciation. (I also thought of depreciating them
monthly, which I could probably do with the scheduled transactions, as my
accountant is using linear depreciation).
That brings me to the problem that my initial entry for the opening
balance of these fixed assets would be wrong, and should possibly set to
zero.
Can I set that balance to zero, then delete the appropriate Equity:Opening
Balances entry?
Would it be sensible to have a sub-account under Equity:Fixed Assets, or
is that just not sensible?
Obviously by the very nature of a double-entry system, in order to debit
the Fixed Assets, I need to credit somewhere else.
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