William Ballard wrote:
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 11:50:43AM -0400, David P James wrote:GnuCash is the best of the lot, but that isn't saying very much.For personal finance I use KMyMoney2, since conceptually it's far more like Quicken on Windows (and probably MS Money as well).I found doing double-entry accounting for my personal finances [using GnuCash] quite natural. There's only one rule: the debits must equal the credits. *Everything* else is just a matter of taste.<snip> Paying for lunch at McDonalds is a $5 credit to the Food account;$5 debit from cash, on the general ledger. Withdrawing money from the ATM is a debit from checking, credit to cash. Your employer is an Accounts Receivable, and the Power Company is an accounts payable.
(Changing to OT, as this is only (very) peripherally Debian-related.)That's a very good 30-second tutorial on using finance-management software. Anyone know of a five-minute version? I'm looking for something that explains (briefly) the difference between double-entry accounting versus its alternatives, what's a "general ledger" as opposed to some other type of ledger, how do you remember if a transaction is a debit or a credit, etc. I had a couple of accounting courses years ago (back when it was done on paper), but I didn't really "get it" then, and besides, it seemed to apply to big financial needs like a business. Every few years I'll fire up GnuCash or something, spend a couple of days trying to get my checkbook stuff entered, while being lost about different accounts, googling a bit and being overwhelmed, and then just give up on it and go back to the nice simple register in my checkbook, which just works.
Thanks! -- Kent