Marking mortgage payments as an expense

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

> I want to mark my mortgage payments as an expense. As a liablality, it
> doesn't show up in the cash flow report which skews the report, IMO. SO
> I create an expense called Mortgage and I put all my mortgage payments
> there. Now, I'd like to reflect the true state of my mortgage liability.
> How would I go about doing that?

This is fixed in CVS.  You should continue to account for your
mortgage (principal) payments as a transfer to the liability.
The updated cash-flow report in CVS will default to the "correct"
set of accounts (in most cases).

The way the cash-flow report works is somewhat strange, and backwards
from what you would think.  What it does is takes all the "selected"
accounts and considers them ONE account.  That means that any
transfers BETWEEN selected accounts are _IGNORED_.  What the report
does is find all transfers that put money INTO your selected accounts,
and then find all transfers OUT OF your selected accounts.

In other words, if you select your Checking AND mortgage account, then
the cash flow wont count those payments.  However, with what is in CVS
now it will happily include transfers from Checking to Liability as a
"Money Out" -- PROVIDED that Checking is in your selected list, and
Liability is not..

Let me describe how the cash-flow works in another way.  Draw a circle
around the set of accounts that are selected.  The report will show
you the list of transaction that move money INTO the circle, or OUT OF
the circle, but will not show transfers within the circle, or solely
outside the circle.

Unfortunately the docs are poor, but this works just fine for me using
what's in CVS.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available