Running Linux, 5th Edition - Matthias Kalle Dalheimer [149]
Income accounts
Unlike asset and liability accounts, income accounts don't represent money you own (at least not directly). Think of the income account as a window into someone else's (usually your employer's) check register. When your boss writes a check to you, it gets recorded on the withdrawals side of his register. If you can imagine those records also showing up in your income account (giving you a glimpse into the portion of his checkbook that concerns you), then you have some idea of how income accounts work. Money doesn't usually stay in these accounts; it immediately goes into one of your asset accounts (usually your checkbook). The value of this account at any time is the total amount you have been paid. It probably goes without saying that you always want these accounts to increase.
Expense accounts
Expense accounts also don't represent money you own. You can think of them as a glimpse into the deposit side of the checkbooks of whomever you are paying at the time. The value of each expense account is the total amount you have paid to that person, business, or activity so far. Although you can't decrease the value of expense accounts (except via refunds and rebates), you do want to manage them well.
Equity accounts
Equity accounts are the odd man out of this group. Although there is a formal definition of equity in the accounting world, it is beyond the scope of this introduction. The easiest way to think of the equity account is as the place where opening balances come from. Remember we said that, in GnuCash, money must always come from some account and go to some other account. What about opening balances — where do they come from? They don't come from income, since it's not like you got a paycheck for that opening balance. Instead, they come from the equity account.
The GnuCash Accounts Window
The main window of GnuCash, shown in Figure 8-54, is the accounts window. This window shows all of your accounts in the currently open file. The accounts are listed in tree form because accounts can contain subaccounts (more on this later). For now, all you need to know is that a plus sign to the left of an account name indicates that is a parent account of one or more subaccounts, and that clicking on the plus sign expands the listing so you can see all accounts under the parent.
The accounts listing shows the account name, a description, and the current account total by default. If an account is a parent to one or more subaccounts, the account total is the combined total of all its subaccounts as well as the parent account itself. Clicking once on an account selects it. Right-clicking on an account shows a context menu with the options to create a new account, delete an account, edit an account's properties, and perform numerous other tasks. Double-clicking an account brings up the associated account ledger, or register. You will learn more about ledgers later.
Figure 8-54. The GnuCash accounts window
Creating new accounts
There are several ways to create a new account. The easiest way is to right-click on an empty area in the accounts window. Another way is to select New Account under the File menu. Create a new account now by selecting the Income account and right-clicking. In the context menu that appears, select New Account to begin.
Figure 8-55 shows the New Account screen. The first thing you need to do is give the account a name. Because you're going to record all the money you get from your job in this account, type Paycheck in the Account Name field. The Account Code and Description fields are for your personal use if you need to record an account code (such as an account number from your