Handling GST and PST from Credit Card tranactions

Russell Sutherland russ at quist.ca
Sat Jan 29 23:26:14 EST 2005


I am just about finished my conversion from Windows/QuickBooks to
Linux/Debian GnuCash.

There are still a few nagging minor issues, but my main quandry
at present is how best to manage credit card purchases, most of
which include GST and PST (at least in my case living in Ontario
Canada).

The GnuCash tutorial recommends that one simply record each
purchase by performing a transfer from the Liability->Credit Card
account directly to the Expense->Travel+Entertainment->Meals account.
Then later in the month after reconciling a transfer is made
from an Assest->Chequing Bank account to the Liability->Credit Card account.

This works fine, except some of the information on the specific
vendor can only be recorded as a comment in the transfer line
and more importantly, the fractional amount of the payment
to the vendor which is tax (15% GST+PST) is not automatically
captured in a Assest->GST+PST paid account.

The only way I know of so far is cumbersome, but does
seem to achieve the desired goal:

	For each purchase:

		a create a Bill from the Vendor, which allows the tax
		  splitting information to be captured

		b Pay the Bill using the standard 						  Business->Vendor->Process 
Payment step, transferring the 		  funds from the Liability-Credit Card 
account

		c Once per month transfer a lump sum of money to the
		  Liability->Credit Card account from an assest account.

Steps a and b are quite involved in terms of the number of steps 
necessary. Is there any simpler way to perform these operations?

-- 
Quist Consulting                Email: russ at quist.ca
219 Donlea Drive                Voice: +1.416.696.7600
Toronto ON  M4G 2N1             Cell:  +1.416.803.0080
CANADA                          WWW:   http://www.quist.ca/


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