Clint, GAAP and the other similar accounting standards are in the world of Financial Accounting. The standards provide a way to communicate financial information in a specified, known manner. Also GAAP is not a single standard, but a collection of standards. In the US, FASB and GASB are at the top of the "House of GAAP," but decisions could get down to a trade group standard if there is not clear direction from above.
Then there is an entire other world: Managerial Accounting. Managerial Accounting is for internal purposes, and generally, individuals are allowed to do whatever they want with their own accounting records. Yes, some alignments with tax standards or accounting standards will likely make your life easier. There are also some generally accepted practices in the world of Managerial Accounting, but there is no requirement to follow any standard or practice for internal records. GAAP requires a fair presentation of the financial condition, and if you just look for examples in public filings, you'll find many examples where similar events must be recorded in different ways for different entities. For example, if my books were off by $100k, that would be a major problem. On the other hand, if Musk, Gates, Buffett were off by $100k, that's within rounding error, so just enter an adjusting entry. This sets up a tension as to what is the "correct" way to record various financial events. The bottom line here is we can discuss how to enter transactions into GnuCash given the correct question, but what you decide to do could be in the realm of Managerial Accounting or decisions about GAAP that are specific to your financial situation. > On 05/03/2026 7:32 PM PDT Clint Chaplin <[email protected]> wrote: > > > I'm fairly new to double-entry bookkeeping, but I think I understand the > general principle, but when it comes to setting up a chart of accounts, it > feels like there are so many ways to set up the tree structure, starting > with what is at the higher levels vs. lower levels, and most trees are > workable. I realize this email list is about GnuChash, which will be used > to instantiate whatever chart I develop, and so is not the correct place to > be asking my questions. > > Does anybody have a pointer to a place where I can ask questions about > account charts and structures, and get some real world perspectives on what > worked and what didn't? And what may be GAAP and what isn't? > > -- > Clint (JOATMON) Chaplin _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list [email protected] To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
