What are /r/GnuCash's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

All these are good questions, but they are all really about accounting rather than GnuCash. GnuCash is a tool for double-entry bookkeeping. To use it well, you do need to know the fundamentals of accounting and double-entry bookkeeping.

I suggest you read an introductory book on small-business accounting. Then read the Tutorial and Concepts Guide from GnuCash: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/index.html .

You could close the books every month, but you'd probably be happier using one or more of the Income & Expense reports.

It's a reverse purchase. It will be a credit into your credit card with the assigned category of what the refund is for, thus correcting that account for what you unspent.

Update

Here's more information: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/cc-enterpay1.html

This explains exactly how to handle this situation.

I can't tell from this screen shot, but the likely scenario here is that you sold shares and did not account for income or loss.

Let's say you bought some mutual fund shares:

Account Debit Credit Bank 10000 Rs Mutual Fund 10000 Rs (1000 shares at 10 Rs)

Then later you sell your shares at 20 Rs each. The naive way to do this is like so:

Account Debit Credit Bank 20000 Rs Mutual Fund 20000 Rs (1000 shares at 20 Rs)

But now your trial balance will fail, because you have created money out of nowhere, through magic. You only put 10000 Rs into your Mutual Fund, and therefore only 10000 Rs can come out. Extra money needs to come in via an income (or go out via an expense) account.

The "using the ledger only" way to do this would be to do something like this:

Account Debit Credit Bank 20000 Rs Mutual Fund 10000 Rs (1000 shares BOUGHT AT at 10 Rs) Capital Gain 10000 Rs (gain from selling at 20 Rs)

The other thing you can do is use the "View lots" feature to create a realized gain/loss transaction in the Mutual Fund account for you (or you can create that by hand.) This is described in detail on this page: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html

If you're using GnuCash for personal expenses control and is not restricted to more traditional accounting conventions, tax filling, report filling, etc - then no problem in using some heterodox classifications If it suits your needs!

However, in a more traditional accounting structure, this control would be done via Vendors (Liability account). And then you would rely on the Reports menu to pull your payments / expenses by Vendors.

The downside is that it adds additional steps to the booking process and when dealing with personal accounting, usually we like to make it simpler, so there's that.

This is covered in the GnuCash T&CG at https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_capgain.html

Note that recording unrealized gains for your personal books is fine (you can do what you like) but for audited accounts you'll really need to seek tax accountant advice.

Personally I would not reflect the doubled asset price unless I actually sell it... at which point I'll record Income:Capgains to reflect the increased monetary value received.

There is good info on the gnucash site including how to setup automatic recurring payments using templates (if you have a variable rate you will need to update your transaction template when you receive a new schedule of payments). https://lists.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/loans_mortgage1.html and https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-help/trans-sched-loans.html.

Which report are you referring to?

To me it seem similar to a mortgage but no house or fees. See: Gnucash Guide - Mortgage Loan

You owe your friend money - that is a liability on your books.

The Currency: drop down list defaults to the currency configured in the Accounts tab under GnuCash Preferences (see Section 10.2.2, “Accounts”). If you wish your accounts to use a different default currency, select one from the list.

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-help/acct-hierarchy.html

I hope this helps

I found the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide really helpful when I was getting started using the program. It covers the basic accounting you need to know to use GnuCash effectively.

I don't know of any videos offhand but I can see if I had any 3rd-party tutorials bookmarked (though I can be bad at bookmarking sometimes!).

Just to double-check though, have you already gone through the tutorial /u/beisenhauer linked? For myself, I found the chapter "The Basics" really useful in my understanding of all the terms and concepts. I started with the section "Accounting Concepts" and just clicked "Next" all the way through to the last section, "Putting It All Together", which walks through exactly how to set up your accounts, with screenshots. This explained the basic concepts, how GnuCash applies them, and how to work GnuCash.

The rest of Part 1: "Getting Started" talks in more depth about types of accounts and how money moves between them, and the rest of the tutorial talks about how to apply it to real-life scenarios.

I would really recommend this tutorial. If you're getting stuck somewhere along the way, share, and we can probably explain what it's saying in more detail!

Please review section 9.7.1.1 of the documentation concerning manually calculated gains/losses.

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html

As outlined in the documentation: At the time of sale, there would be two split lines for the stock asset account (eg. Asset: Stock:Ticker). The first, with a share quantity and price would be the shares actually sold. The second, with no shares or share price provided (only the debit/credit amount) is the manually-calculated capital gain/loss.

That is precisely what I have done in my sale entry. My manually-entered gain ($96 USD entered into split row 6 without any share quantity or price) aught to be recognized as denoting a manually calculated capital gain; and not be mangled as it is currently.

As for the "Trading Accounts" helpful for certain multi-currency / multi-asset scenarios. Please see the following primer:

https://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html

In the past, the purchase and sale transactions, as outlined in my original post, were working as intended. For many years. Now I'm having this issue.

I have made in-kind transfers of a mutual fund from one account to another (conversion to a Roth IRA), which would seem to be a similar situation and haven't had any problems. From your description, it sounds like you are using a positive value for Total Shares in the account for which you are making a "sale", which is not correct: the value must be negative.

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html

Are you charging interest on these loans? If so, having one account per loan is not unreasonable, although I'd probably name them by date the loan began rather than amount (since the amount you are owed will change as they pay you back). If you're not charging interest, one option is using the business/accounts receivable features are for. If you've never worked with A/R before, it can be a bit confusing, so read https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/bus_ar.html carefully if you decide to use it.

Agreed.

Cecilthelionpuppet, I'd also recommend this earlier section of the GC tutorial. Once I read that double-entry bookkeeping and the 5 account types clicked for me and now I know exactly how to classify any account life throws at me. https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/basics-accounting1.html

I use the credit card as a liability and input all the subscriptions or other charges as expenses to the credit card. Then move money from asset:checking to liability:credit card when I pay it off at the end of the month.

Here’s the tutorial page for credit cards.

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_cc.html

First, you'll need to set up your stock as a security in GnuCash https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Stocks/add_stock

Then create a Stock account for the stock using that stock as security.

Then follow the tutorial to add a buy transaction from Opening Balances account: https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?doc=guide

Update - I worked out the solution for this is as follows. You need to create four lines for a given trade.

https://snipboard.io/s9nQOV.jpg

So I bought 5 bp.l shares @ 4.54 = 22.70

Multi-split in the import preview needs to be on

update I searched for value = 463.53
It took me to a split view transaction which went to the imbalance account. However, [i think] gnucash had "NULL" into one of the splits (I don't use split transactions). Checked a few others in my imbalance account, some had it, some did not. Removed them all and now it writes.

a) many thanks for trace file

b) many thanks for looking for the NULL issue.

Screenshot - NULL was where the black rectangle is

https://snipboard.io/4Snflo.jpg

" but i think you need this one?" Correct

I am on windows10. No idea why i can't get the basic one - this does not work for me. Also

https://snipboard.io/cVJyWx.jpg

GNU      4.8

Build ID 4.8a+ (2021-09-28)

Finance::Quote 1.49

Trading Accounts: on

Looks good apart from the USD

IUSA.L is GBX 3251.63 which looks good with your 44.53 USD.

I tried your GUI approach, tried USD; GBP and GBX can't get it.

Can you get it via the GUI?

https://snipboard.io/uVicba.jpg

Cool!

I'm not an Android user, but from what I've heard there are applications like Cash2QIF and Expense Register that track transactions on your phone and exports to GnuCash. Maybe that would be to some use!

I don't understand what you are trying to accomplish. It seems easier to use splits:

• Income:Salary
• Assets:Checking
• Assets:Savings
• Assets:401(k)
• Expenses:Insurance:Medical Insurance

In your example as stated, I would use a single income account if for no other reason than that the definition of "pre-tax" gets complicated quickly (i.e. income vs. payroll taxes).

no i mean it creates a totally new tree each time per ticker so

Trading:LSE:BP

Trading:LSE:VOD

Trading:LSE:RDSB

​

rather than

Trading:

LSE:

BP

VOD

RDSB

Which is nuts

https://snipboard.io/EYUhzH.jpg

Discussion of the account structure for securities: https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?doc=guide, chapter 9.

The short version: create an account of type “stock”, and in the account creation setup sheet where it asks for currency, choose “New Security”, and enter the details of the stock or mutual fund.

>"Equity is the amount funded by the owners or shareholders of a company for the initial start-up and continuous operation of a business," quoth google.

That's a rather confusing entry point to the idea, sadly.

OP: The GNUCash accounting equation is basically Assets - Liabilities = Income - Expenses + Equity. Equity is just a source of assets and liabilities that is neither income nor expense, so that your books remain in balance. AFAICT you won't transact with it outside of initial balances; I have mine hidden by default just to avoid the confusion.

I'm running Gnucash on Windows 10 and doing online price retrieval. It's been a while since I installed Finance::Quote and it was tricky, but I don't remember getting this error. The message sounds like it could be related to file/folder permissions. I think gnc-fq-update needs admin permissions, but I would have expected you to be warned either by Windows or the perl script if you didn't run it that way. When I installed Finance::Quote, I followed the instructions in Section 9.6.3.1 (https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=4&lang=C&doc=guide) with success. That might provide further hints for you.

Have you gone through the section on interest-bearing accounts?

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/invest_int1.html

That also has a simple example with lots of explanation and screenshots. Is it helpful?

Selling Shares

When selling, you need to be sure to put in a negative value for the number units/shares you are selling. Simple example:

Oh, ignore me,

https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/invest-stockprice1.html

​

9.6.4 said to add extra column showing the Total GBP (or US i guess) and that shows the total value of the asset.

Niiiice, time to setup the cron job to update it regularly.

​

Appreciate everyones help.

Have you tried: https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v3/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html

You have two options: either you can manually record the capital gains, or you can use the account scrubbing feature that does it automatically for you. I use the automatic route.

This part of the FAQ covers setting up stocks and mutual funds. Basically, you keep track of how many shares of your mutual fund you have, and also update the price/share. GnuCash will then keep track of profits/loss in the reports.

From the docs, section 4.2.3:

>When you type in the first characters of an account name in either the Transfer field of the transaction line or the Account field of the split line, QuickFill will automatically complete the name from your account list. It also helps you with entering sub-accounts in these fields: simply type the first characters of the parent account name followed by a : (colon) and the first characters of the sub-account name. For example, to enter Assets:Checking, you might type A:C and let GnuCash fill in the rest.

Daily backup to external ssd using Borg Backup. I have a custom script that keeps versions that are daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. My gnucash archives are encrypted with cryptomator and also synced automatically to a google drive account.

Edit: I also use timeshift for the OS itself. All data is stored on its own partition separate from the OS partition.

Like I said, whichever suits you better. I have tried several and I change from time to time. I always try to stick to open source. You can try this one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.totschnig.myexpenses

I use gnucash, but not for crypto. I use blockfolio for Android which is an excellent portfolio management tool with live price updates for your pairs from a variety of exchanges: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blockfolio.blockfolio&hl=en

Gnucash is an excellent double bookmaking tool, but its not so hot for real time share, crypto or general portfolio management I've found.

I created an account in gnucash to represent fiat in/out of my savings/bank for an exchange purchase, and then when i cash out and return it back to my bank/cash. This shows me how much I am win/loss in fiat (and because it crypto, its all winning for now :D), and then blockfolio for managing the crypto itself.

I guessed so, googled the information about inventory before here.

I guess I can create some web interface for this purpose, add new item by EAN, let it find some info and then add it to shopping date and mark the price, then again and again.

Or rather look for something that already does this + supports scanning bills.

EDIT: This Android app seems like it (seems its only in German)

EDIT2: Nah, its just take photo and manually add price to it, could not expect it from it to do OCR and guess everything.