Glad to have found this forum and am hopeful (and grateful for) any advice that might be offered.
I've been struggling to grasp double-entry bookkeeping in practice for the past week or two, despite having read various guides and gone through tutorials (although Prof Vince Turner's 60 minute guide on Udemy helped to make some concepts clear to me). To help me get started, I've tried to put together a cheat sheet of frequent transaction types that I expect will be part of my accounts. I'm just wondering if some of you could take a look and tell me if I've got it right or am woefully wrong?
Well no-one else seems to have commented on this, so I'll say that it looks like you've got the hang of your debits and credits. Of course, you have simplified it; where you say "Expenses" you might instead want to say "Assets" for some things, bills could be paid by credit card, etc.
I wouldn't have bothered with a PayPal account since it tends to just come straight out of the bank anyway; also, your credit card refunds isn't what would actually happen (you don't get the refund separately from making your payments but they all get lumped together on the bill, so it's just a reversed purchase, really).
I would also suggest that you add cash withdrawals and deposits, and some income that doesn't go through accounts receivable (gifts, salary, that sort of thing). Then save yourself alot of time by just listing the debits and credits in a table rather than a flowchart. These things come in pairs together, there's not really an ordering IMHO, so nothing to flow!
That's a relief to know that I'm on the right track. I've spent more time than I wanted to with getting to grips with double-entry, so I'm glad it's starting to sink in. Noted on the Paypal and credit card points.
I didn't include a cash withdrawals rule because we don't withdraw any cash from the business (and we don't draw salaries or even hand out gifts - we're stingey that way!).
I've started setting up the accounts in GNUCash. Of all the packages and websites I've tried, it's the easiest to understand. I tried working with Wave and wanted to love it, but just couldn't. Hopefully GNUCash will keep me sane.
