On 2023-07-01 15:23, C H wrote:
Hello,
I downloaded GNUcash a couple weeks ago and I've been gradually entering
past data,
Hello, C H, and welcome to GnuCash!
This is a good type of question for the gnucash-user list, and you will
find many people here ready to try and help you.
We can help you more if you give us some basic information:
* For what are you doing bookkeeping: for your personal finances, for
a business, for something else?
* What version of GnuCash are you using?
* What operating system are you using?
… and there's something I keep running into that I'm hoping
someone here can give me advice about. When I create bills, I frequently
want some expenses to count to one period, and some to count to another.
For example, when I enter a credit card bill, statements are generated
halfway through the month. Half of expenses might be from May and the other
half from June. The only way I've found to make expenses match the right
period is to create two invoices. It feels like there must be a better way.
You mention "bills" and "invoices". These terms normally refer to
GnuCash features which apply to bookkeeping for a business. But you also
"credit card" "statements". Typically these are are entered as routine
internal transactions of a person or business, and do not use the
GnuCash features of "bills" and "invoices".
When you say "enter a credit card bill", do you mean that you hold a
monthly statement for a particular credit card in your hand, and you are
entering into GnuCash information about the purchases and payments
charged to that credit card and listed on that statement? If so, the
normal way to do that is to create a GnuCash "account" corresponding to
that credit card, and then enter each individual purchase or payment as
a separate GnuCash "transaction" in the credit card's GnuCash "account".
Each transaction has its own date, some in May, some in June. What you
do with the monthly statement for the credit card is to "reconcile" it
with your bookkeeping of the transactions, making sure that your books
list exactly the same transactions as the statement lists. There is no
need to use the GnuCash "bills" and "invoices" features.
I tried entering each transaction through journal entries, but it was
cumbersome, prone to mistakes, and then I lost the ability to view
information about my credit card bills on the vendor report page.
Is there an easier way to match expenses to the right period?
If you have not yet read the "GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide"
<https://gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&lang=C&doc=guide>, I strongly
recommend that you put down your statement and read that Guide first.
See especially section 7. "Credit Cards". You might find it helpful to
create an separate GnuCash file just for experimentation. Once you do
the experiments to see how to enter credit card transactions into
GnuCash using the separate file, then open your main bookkeeping file
and do the actual data entry.
Best regards,
—Jim DeLaHunt, from Vancouver, Canada
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