We may not be able to get everything right just the first time. So, we need the ability to make changes or even clean up and start over. You can edit a transaction, cancel an edit, or even delete a transaction. Let us see how we can accomplish these:
- Editing transactions: Remember the $300 cash withdrawal? You suddenly realized that you actually withdrew $350. We are going to edit the transaction to correct this amount. Open the Cash account register, click on the amount, then make your changes, and click Enter. Check that this change is automatically reflected in both Cash and Checking Account. By the way, you can make this edit from either one of these accounts.
- Cancelling edits: In the same transaction, select the Num field and change it to 1595 and Tab out. Let us say, immediately after tabbing out, you realize that you have edited the wrong field, and horrors! You don't seem to have even a wisp of recollection what the number was that you typed over. Don't panic. You can use the Cancel button in the toolbar to revert to the old value. Alternatively, you can right-click and select from the menu Cancel Transaction. The GnuCash Cancel functions just like Undo in other applications.
Note
You can cancel only if you are still in the same transaction. If you had clicked the Enter key, clicking on Cancel won't accomplish anything. At this point, the only way to rollback the change is to quit GnuCash without saving. However, you will lose any other changes you made since you saved last time.
- Deleting transactions: Generally if you find a transaction is not right, you can recover from errors by editing it. However, if you have an unwanted transaction or it is easier to start over, you might want to delete a transaction. Make sure the cursor is on the transaction that you wish to delete and click the toolbar button Delete. You can also right-click on that transaction and select Delete Transaction. You should see a confirmation dialog:
- Go ahead and click on Delete Transaction to confirm the deletion.
- Don't forget to Save to commit all changes.
I can hear you saying, "Boy, that was a big relief. Knowing that I can go back and make changes will let me make those entries more confidently next time." That explains the slow progress in the previous tutorials. Now that GnuCash has provided you the means to overcome the fear of making mistakes, I am sure we are going to fly through the rest of the tutorials!
Tip
Beware of the "Don't ask again" booby trap!
As you saw here, when you do a delete, a window will appear to confirm the delete. The window presents two options, Remember and don't ask again and Remember and don't ask again this session. You are strongly advised NOT TO CHECK any of these options. Too many users have checked one of these options, in a moment of impatience, and have later ended up deleting data unintentionally without any warning.
A similar window called Save the changed transaction, with these two options, will appear if you make a change to a transaction and move to another transaction, without saving.
By chance, if you are already caught in this trap, here is how you can get out. You can reset this from Actions | Reset Warnings.
GnuCash provides several time-saving shortcuts for entering your data.
QuickFill is a feature in GnuCash that tries to guess what you want to enter based on the first few characters you type.
Note
What GnuCash calls QuickFill is more popularly known as auto-complete in several word processing, spreadsheet, and other applications.
- Transaction QuickFill: When you type the first few characters of a description that you have used before, the QuickFill feature automatically fills in the rest of the entire transaction as you last entered it, and you can then go tweak the values to match.
- Account Name QuickFill: 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. You can follow this with ":" and the cursor will move to the first child account in the list. Then type the first few characters of the child account. For example, to select Assets:Current Accounts:Checking Account, you can type in As:Cu:Ch.
- Action Field QuickFill: If you type the first characters of a common action (such as Deposit), GnuCash will fill in the rest.
Data entry shortcuts allow you to type a single character in place of longer values or multiple steps.
Date field shortcuts: In the Date field, you can type the following shortcuts:
|
Shortcut |
Action |
|---|---|
|
|
to increment the date |
|
|
to decrement the date |
|
|
to increment the month |
|
|
to decrement the month |
|
|
to enter the first date of the month |
|
|
to enter the last date of the month |
|
|
to enter the first date of the year |
|
|
to enter the last date of the year |
|
|
to enter today's date |
Note
In view of the fact that - is used as a shortcut to decrement the date, you cannot type in dates in the format 06-05-2010. Instead, use the format 06/05/2010.
- Num field shortcuts: In the Num field of the transaction line, you can type
+to increment the transaction number from the last one you typed in. Typing-will decrement the number. - Action field shortcuts: The Num field shortcuts will also work in the Action field of the split line, if you choose to enter split numbers there.
- You can use Ctrl+Alt+PgUp/PgDn to switch from one tab to another.
To move around the register, use these keys to save time:
- Tab to move to the next field, Shift-Tab to move to the previous field.
- Within a field, you can use Home to move the cursor to the beginning of that field and End to move the cursor to the end of that field.
- Enter to move to the next transaction, to move to the previous transaction.
- Page Up to move up one screen, Page Down to move down one screen.
- If there are lots of transactions in an account register, you can use Shift-Page Up to go to the first transaction and Shift-Page Down to go to the last transaction.
In the amount field of the account register, you can enter math expressions using +, -, *, and /. GnuCash will do the computation and enter the result in that field. For example, if you paid $89.75 for a meal and left a tip of $17.50, you don't have to add this up separately to figure out how much to enter in the account register. You can enter 89.75 + 17.50 in the amount field and tab out. GnuCash will do the addition and enter the result of 107.25 in the amount field.
Tip
Imbalance-USD
While entering the split transactions, if you missed, say, the VA Sales Tax $40 and clicked on Enter, what would happen? Remember that GnuCash does double entry bookkeeping behind the scenes. So, it will try to balance the transaction. It will create a new top level account called Imbalance-USD and park the out-of-balance $40 there. So, whenever you see this Imbalance-USD show up, GnuCash is telling you that you missed out part of a transaction.
How do you fix this? You can open the Imbalance-USD account and edit that account by changing the Transfer field to VA Sales Tax.
- What is the Transfer field shortcut for
Expenses:Auto:RepairsandMaintenance?a.
Ex:Au:RMb.
Ex:Au:Rec.
Ex,Au,Re - What is the Date field shortcut for entering the first day of the month?
a.
fb.
mc.
j