In order to familiarise myself with KMyMoney I'd like to set an accounting period for the UK tax year just about to end, and then post the transactions that occurred during that period. However, I can see no way to do this. Is it not possible? It looks as though any date before today (this is a new installation) is rejected.

This is just a guess, though I am a long-time KMyMoney user!

When you set-up the account opening balance and date, what date did you use?

I believe KMyMoney will not accept any transactions prior to the date of the opening balance.

You may be right. I only installed it today, and am still finding my way around. I didn't set up any bank account, since for my purposes running it as petty cash only should be fine. I haven't even found yet where to post an opening balance. I'll leave it until the weekend when I have more time to poke around. I'm sure once I get started it will be fine.

You can define the start of the fiscal year in Settings, Configure KMyMoney, General. You can define the opening balance of an account at any time using Account, Edit Account while in the Accounts ledger. There is a right-click shortcut as well. Nick is right about transactions pre-dating the account's opening date.

I'm obviously missing something about the way things need to be set up. I've created a Loan account, as a Liability, and deposited £50 into it with the date 5.4.2010. That shows correctly on the summary page. Now I try to spend some of that. I go to Ledgers, Petty Cash and realise that there has been no double-entry. Do I manually put the £50 into Petty Cash using Opening Balance? Can all the other accounts be left without an Opening Balance, assuming 0.00 or can they have a declared 0.00 O/B?

I'm still getting a red date when I try to buy a sample, dated 30/07/2010.

Yes, you can create accounts with a declared O/B of 0.00.

It sounds like you you have set-up 2 accounts; a liability account called 'Loan' and an asset account called 'Petty Cash'?

I'm guessing again, but I think you expect the £50 in your Loan account to be magically available for you to spend in Petty Cash, however KMM has no way of knowing there is a link between these accounts.

In KMM liability accounts are typically used where you owe money e.g. on a Credit Card or when you borrow money from the bank.

If I've understood you correctly all you need is an Asset account called 'Petty Cash' with an opening balance of £50 on 5.4.2010 (assuming that was the case).

Now open the Petty Cash ledger and start spending!

If you add money to Petty Cash at a later date you simply make a deposit through the ledger.

The double-entry takes place within the ledger itself, not between Asset Accounts and Liability Accounts.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks. It took a few tries before I got it right. It's a matter of language, really. Once I found that Transfer From was the other half of the transaction, it made sense.

I guess the sensible thing to do now is to go through the list of accounts and put O/Bs into each one that I'm likely to use.

Thanks again

I few additional things: the tax year can be setup as explained. There's no need to separate tax years in different KMyMoney files (just if that idea comes up). If you need to get figures for tax purposes the reporting system will take care of that. It might be a bit odd for those cases where the fiscal year is different from the calendar year, but that is something that needs to be tackled in a future version. Don't fool too much with the opening date of an account. Moving it past any transaction in the ledger can result in weird figures. Not sure, if we protect you from doing that in KMyMoney's financial engine.

To get started, you might also take a look at the initial chapters of the KMyMoney manual to get familiar with the concepts.

Thanks for the warning re dates - I was planning to do yearly close-down, but I'll avoid that now. Do I simply put the current year dates into reports, instead?

I started going through the manual last night - I'll read more today.

One last piece of the jigsaw, I think. This is to keep a record of a very low turnover hobby account. As such, there are equipment assets that need to be monitored, as they are counted as profit for tax purposes. They were originally posted against Petty Cash and Expenses > Equipment as it doesn't seem to be possible to post against Petty Cash and Assets > Equipment. I guess I somehow need to do a transfer now from Expenses > Equipment to Assets > Equipment, but it's not immediately obvious how to do that. I looked at Transfer, but it seems to only offer Payees. Any idea how I can do this?

If you know how to get Assets > Equipment as an account that a bill can be posted against I will amend or cancel and re-post the original entry.

To solve this problem, I'd create an Asset > Equipment account of type Asset first. Once you have it, you can certainly enter a transaction in Petty Cash and use Asset > Equipment as the category (KMyMoney will turn this into a transfer type transaction, but don't worry.)

Accounts and categories are actually almost identical. They are the pots where you count your beans http://kmymoney.org/kde4/online-manual/makingmostof.html#makingmostof.basicaccounting

To solve the problem of the wrong categorization you can edit the transactions and use Asset > Equipment as the category. If you click the drop down box it won't be visible at first, but simply double-click the drop-down-box triangle and all accounts/categories will be shown then. Select Asset > Equipment and save the transaction. You're set.

Hope that answers your questions. I more and more get the feeling that we need some good screencasts which explain users how to do things in KMyMoney to solve various use cases. If the day would only have more than 24 hrs

ipwizard wrote:To solve this problem, I'd create an Asset > Equipment account of type Asset first. Once you have it, you can certainly enter a transaction in Petty Cash and use Asset > Equipment as the category (KMyMoney will turn this into a transfer type transaction, but don't worry.)

Accounts and categories are actually almost identical. They are the pots where you count your beans http://kmymoney.org/kde4/online-manual/makingmostof.html#makingmostof.basicaccounting

To solve the problem of the wrong categorization you can edit the transactions and use Asset > Equipment as the category. If you click the drop down box it won't be visible at first, but simply double-click the drop-down-box triangle and all accounts/categories will be shown then. Select Asset > Equipment and save the transaction. You're set.

I tried this originally. The problem is that it increases the cash in Petty Cash by that value, showing it as a deposit, instead of decreasing it by payment.

Hope that answers your questions. I more and more get the feeling that we need some good screencasts which explain users how to do things in KMyMoney to solve various use cases. If the day would only have more than 24 hrs

I know that feeling only too well. Maybe when I get more familiar with it I will be able to help, one way or another.

annew wrote:I tried this originally. The problem is that it increases the cash in Petty Cash by that value, showing it as a deposit, instead of decreasing it by payment.

Then something is wrong. If you move money from one asset account to another one decreases and one increases. If you spent money on an asset, you move the money from Patty Cash to the Asset. If it is the other way around, edit the transaction and negate the amount.

There is no expense involved, at least accounting wise because you still own the asset. Your networth does not change during that transaction - the sum of the assets remains the same (no matter how the sign is set).

It might seems difficult to understand at first, but once you get the idea it is pretty simple.

Yes, something must be wrong, but I'm at a loss to know what. I start in Ledgers > Petty Cash, clicking on Withdrawals, and enter the payee, transaction number and amount - all is well so far. Then I go to Category and accept Asset > Equipment - at which point the entry jumps across to the Deposit tab. I assume this is why Petty Cash shows an increase and the Asset file shows a negative amount.

At this point it's still possible to start all over, if you think I've chosen an unsuitable accounting setup, or if you think there is some other bad choice that I made. My gut feeling is that it's being too clever, thinking that I can't possibly want to do what I said I wanted to do and putting it right for me.

The other thing is, I don't see any business-like reports, such as P/L and Balance Sheet. I'm sure I've seen them somewhere (could be in the manual) so this also suggests that maybe I've got the wrong account setup for my purposes.

I tried a customized (date range) Transactions by Account report, but printing failed. Printer configuration tells me that /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstoraster failed. For the moment I'll get around this by printing to PDF.

Please tell me if you think a fresh start would be better.

annew wrote:I start in Ledgers > Petty Cash, clicking on Withdrawals, and enter the payee, transaction number and amount - all is well so far. Then I go to Category and accept Asset > Equipment - at which point the entry jumps across to the Deposit tab

What happens if you just click on the Withdrawals tab at that point? I know it sounds weird, but this could really do the trick. Another option is to input the amount as negative number (preceded with a minus sign).

annew wrote:At this point it's still possible to start all over, if you think I've chosen an unsuitable accounting setup, or if you think there is some other bad choice that I made.

I don't think so. If you still see deposits that should actually be withdrawals simply edit them and reverse the sign. That turns them the way you want them

annew wrote:The other thing is, I don't see any business-like reports, such as P/L and Balance Sheet

Well, there is no P/L sheet but an income/expense report. Using Income and Expenses this year I pretty much get a feeling of what's going on so far in my pocket. The balance sheet can be obtained the way you did it. If printing fails, then this seems to be a problem of your setup. We simply call KHTMLView::print() and let go. Can you print from within Konqi?

annew wrote:Please tell me if you think a fresh start would be better.

It really depends on the number of transactions. If you have many and don't get things straight then it might be feasible. Or simply open up another file and play with it. If you don't use real figures you could always send that file to one of the developers who can take a look at it.

ipwizard wrote: What happens if you just click on the Withdrawals tab at that point? I know it sounds weird, but this could really do the trick.

When it jumps to Deposit, the Withdrawals tab is greyed out, and cannot be used.

Another option is to input the amount as negative number (preceded with a minus sign).

Unfortunately, it knows that a deposit should not be minus, so it ignores the sign and you still get a deposit.

annew wrote:At this point it's still possible to start all over, if you think I've chosen an unsuitable accounting setup, or if you think there is some other bad choice that I made.

ipwizard wrote:I don't think so. If you still see deposits that should actually be withdrawals simply edit them and reverse the sign. That turns them the way you want them

That Assets > Equipment account seems to tell it that the transaction is not a regular one, and it doesn't behave like that.

annew wrote:The other thing is, I don't see any business-like reports, such as P/L and Balance Sheet

ipwizard wrote: Well, there is no P/L sheet but an income/expense report. Using Income and Expenses this year I pretty much get a feeling of what's going on so far in my pocket. The balance sheet can be obtained the way you did it. If printing fails, then this seems to be a problem of your setup. We simply call KHTMLView::print() and let go. Can you print from within Konqi?

Hmm - no. I didn't realise this, since other applications appear to print without a problem. I printed the report to a pdf and then printed it from there. In this case I used Adobe Reader, but Okular also prints perfectly well. (It's just that Reader is newly installed, and I haven't changed the default back to Okular.)

annew wrote:Please tell me if you think a fresh start would be better.

ipwizard wrote: It really depends on the number of transactions. If you have many and don't get things straight then it might be feasible. Or simply open up another file and play with it. If you don't use real figures you could always send that file to one of the developers who can take a look at it.

There's little that's confidential One person is named, if I change that name I can send the file on. It might be interesting for them to see what's happening.