diff --git a/po/POTFILES.in b/po/POTFILES.in
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..c72a34a4c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/po/POTFILES.in
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+# POTFILES.in: This file is overwritten my the `make pot` target or by
+# the make-gnucash-potfiles script.  
+# 
+# The reason why we version-control this generated file is because the
+# Makefile in this directory is not under our control (but instead
+# gettext's) and it doesn't contain any rules for creating this
+# file. The gettext setup assumes by convention that this file exists
+# and doesn't need to be generated, so as long as we use the gettext
+# build system in the po directory, we need to follow that convention.