Budgeting with Accounts Payable and then reconciling

[Dave Peticolas]

"Jack McKinney" writes:
> 
>      I have created a bank account for my bank account and an income account
> for my employer.  When I get my paycheck, I transfer the money from the
> income account to my bank account.  I almost never open my monthly statement
> anymore... My bank has online review of my account, so I can daily update
> my entries (marking them as cleared), and then comparing my cleared balance
> with the daily balance.  So far, no misses (unless I forgot a transaction).
>      I have also started implementing some subaccounts to my bank account
> to allow budgetting.  I have created an account called "Accounts Payable"
> which is a subaccount of my bank account (not sure if I am using the term
> "Accounts Payable correctly here, but hear with me).  Under this account,
> I create subaccounts for all of my recurring bills (Auto insurance, rent,
> etc.).
>      Now, every paycheck I get (twice a month), I transfer the money from
> my income account to my bank account.  Then, I transfer appropriate portions
> of my bills to the AP accounts.  For example, I pay rent once a month, so I
> transfer half of my rent to my "Accounts Payable.Rent" subaccount.  My auto
> insurance is paid every 6 months, so I transfer 1/12th of the bill into that
> account.
>      So, until I actually pay bills, the money is in my bank account, as
> indicated by the total on the account, but I also see how much is in the
> top level account so that I know how much I still have (i.e., not already
> budgetted).
>      Then, when my rent is due, the rent is transferred from the subaccount
> for rent instead of the main account.
>      Well, it took some time before I could actually start using all of this.
> For example, instead of transferring my rent money from Bank to Bank.AP.Rent,
> and then paying the rent out of that account, I simply paid the rent, and
> then transfered an additional half of the rent into the account.  This made
> me strapped for cash for almost a month, but it is worth it since I am now
> ahead on my bills.
>      During this transition time, I never had a problem.  Well, today is the
> first day that I entered payments _from_ the AP accounts.  Here is the
> problem: If I open my top level account, it shows my balance and my cleared
> balance.  The balance shows how much money is left over after I have entered
> all of my cleared and uncleared transactions and transfered money to my APs.
> My cleared balance only shows the balance of what has cleared in this account
> (ignoring subaccounts).

In the register window, GnuCash only shows the balance & cleared balance
for the open account, excluding any subaccounts. If GnuCash showed the balance
including subaccounts, then your transfers from Bank to Bank.AP.Rent would
not change the balance because they would 'cancel out'.

There is currently no option to show balances including subaccounts in
the register window. But consider this feature officially requested :)

dave