Setting up Account Owed

[Michael Hendry]

On 5 Sep 2014, at 18:40, Jules Dellinger <dellingerj at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here’s the situation. I live in an apartment with two other people, but I pay all of the bills. Then, the other two people pay me a third of the bills. What is the best way to go about setting up accounts in GnuCash for this? I would like to keep track of the amount each person owes me in their individual account and have some way of showing the due date for that payment as well as when it was received. 
> 
> Thanks for the help. 
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I make no claim that this is the best way of doing this, but this is how I would approach it.

Create three new accounts:

Assets:Current Assets:Utility Bills Paid for Alice
Assets:Current Assets:Utility Bills Paid for Bob
Expenses:Utility Bills Paid for Jules

When you pay the bill, instead of charging the whole amount to an Expenses account, divide it by three, and allocate the split charge to each of the three new accounts.

Your expenses reports will include only the expenses you were due to pay; when Alice and Bob pay their shares, you will post the incoming payments to the new Current Asset accounts and reduce these accounts to zero.

I use this method when I pay my vet for my dogs’ treatment. Because of an excess levied by the company on new conditions, not all of the treatment is reimbursed, so part of the treatment is charged to Expenses:Vet - Net Costs and the rest to Assets:Current Assets:Vet Costs (Reimbursable).

Once I receive the cheque from the insurance company, I post the deposit to my bank account and to that Asset account.

Hope this helps,

Michael