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I just started using GnuCash for personal use and am just as new to accounting, other than some college courses decades ago.

I am able to import Checking and Savings transactions from my credit union (via online OFX) with no problem. I have to enter my Salary transactions separately as I don't have them in any easily importable format. For my first attempt at this, I created a split transaction in the Salary account register with all the deductions for taxes, health insurance, etc. plus one entry for each of the the direct deposits to Checking and Savings. This results in a duplicate transaction for each direct deposit in both Checking and Savings accounts.

This would be simple if I just had the one deposit. I would just split that transaction and fill out the rest for the Salary transaction. Is there any way to merge the two direct deposit transactions into the split Salary transaction? Should I just exclude the direct deposits from the split transaction and have them as separate transactions in the Salary register? Having them all in the same split transaction makes the most sense to me because all the pieces are dependent on each other.

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If you have the salary transaction split amounts correct the way you want them in one transaction, simply delete the duplicate transactions. From what you described you need to delete one from each of the checking and savings accounts. Note in this case you are deleting the ones you imported from the bank, because they are being replaced with the split you manually created.

Obviously you'll want to confirm that the bank accounts still balance when you're done, in case you fat-fingered the manual entry.

Side note: in the future, if you do your manual entries before the import, there's a good chance GnuCash will match up those deposits and you won't have to deal with this next time. But either way, deleting the dups isn't that big of a deal either.

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  • Deleting the duplicates is what I did for the first month I entered. I started with January 1, 2021 but I may delete and re-import everything on or after February 1 to see if GnuCash matches them as you suggest.
    – Akaitatsu
    May 23, 2021 at 3:35
  • @Akaitatsu deleting many transactions may be cumbersome in GnuCash. Tip: Another thing that GnuCash can do is "learn" what categories specific transactions should use when importing. But, once you "teach" it about a category, it only applies it on future imports. So, when I'm importing many transactions (say an entire year's worth of CC transactions), I will start categorizing different types for month 1 in the import screen, and then cancel the import. Then import the same file again, and this time all of those I already selected will match up (all year), select some more, cancel, repeat...
    – TTT
    May 23, 2021 at 21:51
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    I didn't actually have to delete all the transactions. I took a chance and just deleted the duplicates that originally came from the import. When I imported again, GnuCash matched them up perfectly. Your instructions were spot on.
    – Akaitatsu
    May 24, 2021 at 21:19

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