On Sun, May 18, 2025 at 9:37 AM Michael or Penny Novack < [email protected]> wrote:
> It would be very helpful if (and maybe there already is) there was a place > that would say what would be the usual or common options for the reports. > For example, I think the transaction report should include all the expense > accounts. > > Just a bit of guidance would be incredibly helpful. > > I'm sure that there are other reports that would be helpful, but I don't > know if I should select everything, or just the asset accounts, or the > income accounts, or.... (and so on). > > Misunderstanding. Gnucash is a TOOL for partially automating double entry > bookkeeping. In terms of how such systems are called, "general ledger" > > Take ANY Tool, say a hammer. The manual for a hammer might tell you what > it is for (drive nails) and how to properly use it (grip, etc.). Out of > scope for the hammer manual to teach you "what is a nail used for?" "why > would I want to use a nail" etc. > > What you are needing is something along the lines of "what is double entry > bookkeeping?" describing things like what are the usual reports, how are > they formatted, etc. Things that are NOT specific to gnucash. In other > words, if we are talking about a report such as "Profit and Loss", what it > looks like, what's included in it, etc. that is independent of how the > double entry "general ledger" is kept. Thus the report ends up looking the > same (same data in it) whether produced by gnucash or manually during the > process of "closing the books" the books being pen and ink on paper (as it > was when I learned ~65 years ago). > > Sorry, gnucash makes the work of double entry bookkeeping easier, but you > still have to learn about double entry bookkeeping. > > Michael D Novack > Having come from a Quicken background, where reports work "out of the box", the reports in GnuCash have been difficult. I know that I have gaps in my understanding of accounting and bookkeeping. I have had very little problems using GnuCash's double-entry method. But you are correct in that I am lacking knowledge in some of the report areas - I don't think that is a lack of knowledge of double-entry accounting, however. Just did some searching using "double entry accounting reports" and all that is returned is the very basic information about what double-entry accounting is, with nothing about reporting. -- _________________________________ Richard Losey [email protected] Micah 6:8 _______________________________________________ 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.
