Accounting for credit card purchases (revisited)

[Christopher Scott]

On Sat, Feb 26, 2005 at 03:35:22PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> cscott at endjinn.net (Christopher Scott) writes:
> 
> > Sorry, I wasn't clear there.  Assets:Checking (Reserved) is a
> > sub-account of Assets:Checking.  It actually is
> > Assets:Checking:Reserved.  
> 
> Clarity is everything!  Thank you for correcting your statement.
> Your revised statement makes more sense.
> 
> >   The Assets:Checking:Reserved account is
> > correct, but the Assets:Checking account is off by the amount of the
> > payment, since the $500 never came out of the Assets:Checking account.  
> 
> Um, the $500 came out of the Assets:Checking during the 5 of these
> transactions:
> 
> >> > Liabilities:Credit Card             CR 100
> >> > Expenses:Food                       DR 100
> >> > Assets:Checking (Reserved)          DR 100
> >> > Assets:Checking                     CR 100
> 
> Each one of these moves money from A:C to A:C:R.  The _total_ balance 
> of A:C remains the same, but the immediate balance of A:C is reduced
> (and A:C:R increased) by the second set of splits in this transaction.
> 
> Then when you create the actual payment transaction:
> 
> >> > Assets:Checking (Reserved)          CR 500
> >> > Liabilities:Credit Card             DR 500
> 
> it removes those funds from A:C:R, so your total A:C balance should
> now be $500 lower.
> 
> All is balanced, now.  So, this is all correct.
> 
> -derek
> 

Ah, I figured out what I was doing wrong in all this.  Sorry for the
large amount of quoting, but hopefully this will help someone else out.

My setup was as follows:

Checking:
-  Checking (mine)
   -  Checking (reserved)

I changed it to the following:

Checking:
-  Checking (overall) -> placeholder account
   -  Checking (mine)
   -  Checking (reserved)

Now, Checking (Overall) shows the correct overall balance.  Before, the
Checking (mine) account wasn't reflecting the correct overall balance,
which led to my confusion and these posts.

Thank you very much for your help on this and for Gnucash in general.

-- 
Christopher Scott
cscott at endjinn.net