Folks trying to imitate Pen & Paper using a computer are always going
to have to adjust their workflow or make concessions for the
difference in formats. This is true no matter the task at hand, or the
software used, and is true of things not even accounting related at all.
I'm glad GnuCash gives the choice. Some software forces you to do what
*it* wants.
Not as much as you think. Assuming you were using "journal view" to
enter transactions the only real difference is that software like
gnucash is "autoposting" (when you hit enter closing the transaction
entry process the journal entry is posted to the ledger accounts WITHOUT
ERROR --- errors made during the manual posting of pen and ink on paper
days were the bane of our existence and we had to learn all sorts of
tricks* to find the errors). That's why we had to do a periodic trial
balance <<I have not done a trial balance since first using a computer
bookkeeping app since the computer simply won't allow "out of balance"
--- if Imbalance is zero, the books are in balance >>
Simply entering simple (two account) transactions directly in the ledger
is very like the shortcut sometimes used in pen and ink on paper days
known as "cashbook accounting" where a small subset of the most popular
accounts had their own book separate from the main journal-ledger.
Gnucash (or other similar apps) is simply expanding the subset to the
entire ledger. But unlike pen and ink on paper days, gnucash can produce
as a report the virtual journal of these transactions (they were never
entered in journal form)
THAT is why I keep saying "if you don't know how you would enter
something pen and ink on paper" then your problem is really a
bookkeeping question as opposed to a gnucash question.
Michael D Novack
* example --- "if the difference (the oob amount) is divisible by 9 then
look for a transposition of digits" ------- thus 51 -15 = 36 which is
divisible by 9 251 - 152 = 99 which is divisible by 9
There were other such rules, but transposition errors during posting
were the most common error so this was the most import "rule"
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