Best way to manage utilities

[Jim Thompson]

Maybe not what you want, but I keep track of my auto fuel usage within
notes in GnuCash...
- View
- Double Line

When I fill the tank, I write the current odometer onto the slip - then
when entering the charge into GC I also enter the quantity of fuel  and
odometer reading (gallons and miles in US) and can do a calculation of
miles/gal - and enter that as well...

So the extra entry stuff looks like this (last 2 visits to refuel)...

14.785 - 16,160 (23.33 mpg)
...
15.976 - 16,546 (24.16 mpg)

In the above example, after I enter gallons and total mileage..
16546 - 16160 = 386 miles
386 / 15.976 = 24.16 miles/gallon

Good enough for me...

Hope this helps.

Jim


On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 7:44 AM, Alberto Dante <alberto.dante at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Ian, yes, I agree, you are right...
>
>> Two advantages of having investment accounts recorded as shares that I
>> don't think you would gain for utilities are 1: you can use
>> Finance:Quotes to have GnuCash update stock prices without manually
>> entering their changing values all the time., and 2.  (In the U.S. at
>> least) you often need to report the actual numbers of shares purchased
>> or sold on tax forms when reporting capital gains/losses, so having a
>> record of your # of shares as well as their monetary value is an
>> important piece of your financial record.  There is nothing like that
>> for utilities.  If you run a business, for example and are deducting
>> Utilities as a business expense, you only need to report the amount of
>> money paid towards the bill, not the kWh of electricity used or therms
>> of gas used.  (Not a tax expert, but I think this is true for any
>> business entity).
>>
> In Italy pricing of utilities is very complicated too...
>
>> Another point is that pricing of utilities is often more complicated
>> than price per unit.  Again, I only have a local perspective, so maybe
>> things are simpler in Italy, but my electric bill here has tiered
>> pricing: after a certain number of kWh used each month, the price per
>> kWh changes.  There might be utilities that change rate as a function
>> of the time of day (maybe I'm only thinking of phone bills, but it
>> stands to reason utilities might implement peak pricing).
>>
> I have already lots of spradsheets, but I'd like simply to manage with
> Gnucash the overall (two-monthly) bill amount, the quantity of energy (kWh)
> and the average price unit (Euro/kWh) = bill amount / quantity of energy,
> nothing else.
>
>> Long story short, I don't know if the conversion from amount used to
>> price is beyond the capability of entering into a GnuCash formula, but
>> I do think it's more complicated than share prices and currency
>> exchange rates.  I'd add another vote to the "use a spreadsheet"
>> column if you really want to understand the relationship between your
>> usage and your bill, or if you're just trying to track your total
>> usage, and use the price only as an decent approximation of your usage
>> in GnuCash if you're trying to plan your budget or looking for ways to
>> cut expenses.
>>
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