While it is possible to enter transactions directly into expense accounts, it is not normally how these are entered. For most people, transactions for an expense account are added when the user is entering data into the other account in the transaction. In other words, if you have an expense account for Charitable Donations (e.g., Expenses:Charity), you will typically add a transaction to the expense account by assigning a check in your checking account register to the Charity account.

If you open an expense account, you will see a register similar to most others you find in GnuCash. The informal column headings for the transaction amounts are slightly different, however. The left (debit) column will read Tot Expense, while the right (credit) column will read Tot Rebate.