Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Anthony Dardis]

If by `balancing' you mean reconciling, you reconcile the checking  
account, and make sure to check the "Include subaccounts" box in the  
opening reconcile dialog. It will pick up all the transactions against all  
the subaccounts.

This behavior is sort of perfect for what you want: your checking account  
shows the balance minus the hold-asides that you have in your subaccounts,  
so it's telling you what you want it to about what you have available --  
taking the hold-asides into account; the real amount only appears when you  
reconcile, and when you are looking at the Accounts page balance for the  
checking account.


On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:03:11 -0500, Wayne Bird <wrbird at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> James,
>
> Thanks for the example!  This is very helpful, but again, I don't want  
> to force GnuCash into being an envelope system, if there is a better  
> way.  Or at least my goal is to learn as much as I can about the  
> "standard" method.
>
> Now that said, I find it interesting that under the Accounts tab the  
> checking acct total is $1,813.00, but when I open the checking account I  
> have a balance of $1,400.  I would imagine this is because the Accounts  
> tab is giving the overall total (subaccounts included).  Whereas, when  
> you go into the checking account, it's only showing the total for that  
> particular account (no subaccounts included).  I can see how this can  
> get ugly.  But this will be the case any time there's a subaccount in  
> checking.  Yes, balancing can be interesting.  I don't remember who it  
> was, but someone posted that their checking account was only a place  
> holder for all their subaccounts.  I wonder how that works for balancing?
>
> Wayne
>
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:58:14 -0800
> From: fireflys_98 at yahoo.com
> Subject: RE: Tracking Money in Savings Account
> To: brakhane at googlemail.com; wrbird at hotmail.com
> CC: adardis at gmail.com; derek at ihtfp.com; warlord at mit.edu;  
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>
> So attached is my stupidly simple sample of what I think an envelope  
> system could be.
>
> Note, I've not made this very detailed, doesn't include worrying too  
> much about pay, it's just net income (not splitting to savings accounts,  
> or anything else)
>
> I moved $100 into the Electric Envelope ready to pay a bill (that was  
> then paid)
> I moved $100 into Phone Envelope ready to pay the phone bill, it's setup  
> to pay in a few days time.
> I moved $100 into my envelope for buying something that I wanted to save  
> up for, obviously not buying anything with it yet, so it's just sitting  
> there.
>
> The complex bit, as far as I'm concerned is going to be balancing the  
> accounts, since you'll have a bunch of splits that the bank doesn't have.
>
> - James Duerr
>
>
>
> E-mail: FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com
>
> ---------------------
>
> Discover a lost art - play Marbles. May 2004
>
> www.marillion.com
>
>
>