2.3. Setting Preferences
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## 2.3. Setting Preferences

GnuCash allows you to customize your session by setting several preference options. From the menu select Edit -> Preferences, then make your desired changes using the list of items shown on the left. Once you have finished making your preference changes, select Apply or OK to apply the changes to your session. (Selecting Apply applies the changes while leaving the Preferences window still open. Selecting OK applies the changes and closes the Preferences window.) At any time, you can click on the Default button to return the options to the default preference setting.

In this section, we will discuss some of the items that relate to setting up your session and using files: Accounts, Business, General and Online Banking & Importing. The International item relates to currencies and is discussed in Chapter 9. The Reconcile, Register, Register Colors, Scheduled Transactions and Transaction Matcher items relate to transactions and account registers, and they are discussed in Chapter 4.

The Accounts item lets you set the following options:

- Account Separator - The account separator is the character that separates a parent account from its subaccount, for example Utilities:Electric. The default is a :(Colon), but you can also select /(Slash), \(Backslash), -(Dash) or .(Period). Parent accounts and subaccounts are discussed in section 3.4

- Reversed-balance accounts types - This option lets you determine whether account balances will display as positive or negative numbers:

  - None shows all credit balances as negative and all debit balances as positive. (See Accounting Terminology note in this chapter for more information on debits and credits.)

  - Credit Accounts (default) displays a positive balance for account types that would normally carry a credit balance (income, credit, liability, equity). See Chapter 3 for more information on these account types.

  - Income & Expense assigns a positive credit balance to income account balances and a negative debit balance to expense account balances. See Chapter 3 for more information on these account types.

- Use accounting labels - Select this option if you want column headings to refer to debits and credits instead of the default informal headings. (See Accounting Terminology note in this chapter for more information on debits and credits.)

The Business item lets you set the following options:

- Number of Rows - Lets you select the default number of register rows to display in invoices.

- Invoice Tax Included? - Lets you set if tax is included by default in entries on invoices. This setting applies only to new customers and vendors.

- Bill Tax Included? - Lets you set if tax is included by default in entries on bills. This setting applies only to new customers and vendors.

In General, you will see the default settings shown here:

This image shows the GnuCash Preferences dialog where the options of how GnuCash looks and acts are setup.

- Show Advanced Settings - When this is selected, GnuCash displays the Advanced item in the GnuCash Preferences dialog.

- Toolbar Buttons - Select whether to display icons, text, or both on the tool bar.

- Display "Tip of the Day" - You can turn on or off the option to display the “Tip of the Day” dialog on startup.

- Display negative amounts in red - If you turn off this option, GnuCash will display negative numbers in black.

- Automatic Decimal Doint - This option will automatically insert a decimal point into numbers you type in.

- Auto Decimal Places - If you select the Automatic Decimal Point option, this option allows you to set the number of decimal places to be used.

- No account list setup on new file - This option turns off the display of the New Account Hierarchy Setup druid when File -> New File is selected.

- Days to retain log files - This option deletes log files after the number of days set here.

The Online Banking & Importing item contains only one option, QIF Verbose Documentation. The first time you use the importer (discussed later in this chapter), you may notice that the importer has detailed instructions on how to import a file. Once you have become familiar with using the importer, you might want to turn off this option. Turning off the option gives you less detail in the importer dialogs.

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