I appreciate the info and the quick lesson. I found the program extremely 
unintuitive, but double-entry accounting completely escapes me!

On Thursday, April 26, 2012 19:07:20 Matt Graham wrote:
> From: Nathan England <nathan@nmecs.com>
> 
> > http://moneydance.com/
> > Is by far the best, though it is not free
> 
> The OP said he was looking for free stuff.  I guess this might work if
> you're willing to pay them whatever yearly fee they're charging now.
> 
> > GnuCash is an accounting program but it is so complicated to use it
> > is not worth the time or hassle.
> 
> Seriously?  I started using GNUcash in 2000, when the documentation was
> barely there.  I've never had any formal accounting training, and I figured
> it all out pretty quickly.  The double-entry bookkeeping that GNUcash uses
> makes it really easy to see how much you've spent from date X to date Y on
> (category of expenses), and it'll track stocks/bonds/mutual funds if you
> install Finance::Quote.
> 
> Take a look at the basic help,
> http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-help/help.html , and see if anything
> in the advanced help ,
> http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html is interesting.
> 
> The thing to do when setting up GNUcash is to start out your checking
> account opening balance with the opening balance on the first of (month),
> then just enter all the income/expenses from then til today that are on
> your bank statement.  Start your cash in wallet opening balance with the
> bills in your wallet.  *DON'T* try to enter everything you have records of,
> just pick a start date.[0]  Then spend 5 minutes every day recording what
> you spent that day and what you spent it on.  It should become second
> nature pretty quickly.
> 
> If you're going somewhere without your computer[1], one way to keep records
> is to write down how much cash is in your wallet right before you leave,
> and call that X.  Then write down how much is in there when you get back,
> and call that Y.  Take (X - Y) and charge that to
> Expenses:Entertainment:Travel [2] with a description of "trip to
> $SOMEWHERE".  Debit card/whatever charges will show up on your bank's page
> and you can just enter those numbers when you get back.
> 
> If you're really hardcore, you can read
> http://gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/txns-registers1.html#txns-regis
> ters-multiaccount2 , so you can split every grocery/restaurant bill into
> "bill" and "sales tax". Then at the end of the year/month, you can complain
> about how the government's wasting your $XXX.YY on $THINGS_YOU_DONT_LIKE .
> 
> [0] Accountants, feel free to gasp in horror here.
> [1] I know, that's crazy talk, man.
> [2] The default setup should create a bunch of expense accounts like that.
-- 

Regards,

Nathan England

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Nathan England (nathan@nmecs.com)
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