Equity Account Postings - a bug or a misunderstanding?

[Mike or Penny Novack]

(this should have been on the "user" list)

I would handle this with an asset account (as opposed to equity).

It is very like what for me is a common situation. I live in a rural 
area, don't drive to town where the bank is every day. In fact, we try 
to combine trips so only go to town once or twice a week. But I receive 
mail six days a week.

Let's say the organization receives a check from national (our share of 
membership dues and any extra donations made to our chapter but 
processed through national). I record this into an asset account 
"undeposited funds" split to the income accounts "membership" and 
"unrestricted donations". When at some later date I get to town and can 
make a deposit a second transaction transferring between the asset 
accounts "checking" (or "savings") and "undeposited funds".

Isn't your situation like that? This money you are due as of some date 
is an asset, but not yet deposited into the bank account where will be 
going.

Michael


Philip Haynes wrote:

>Hi All,
>I have a situation where I am making some postings in gnucash and the
>resulting values are making no sense to me at all (from an accounting
>perspective). The lack of sense is such that I am leaning towards a
>bug explanation rather than a user problem (I know, a dangerous
>assumption).
>
>So here we go;
>
>I have a mutual fund account that regularly (monthly) sells a number
>of units in order to generate a cash amount.
>The date of the transaction for "selling" the funds is one date and
>the date at which the resulting money is credited to my account is a
>separate date, usually two days later.
>Both of these accounts are owned by a Trust and so the set of accounts
>I am managing with gnucash are the accounts for the Trust.
>I load both these data sets from different QIF files from different
>insitutions, the sell from my fund manager and the cash receipt from
>my bank.
>
>As a result of this date inconvenience I have to post the amount from
>the "sale of the funds" somewhere until I am able to link it to the
>bank transaction receiving the cash.
>
>Here is where the problem occurs;
>
>My thought is that this posting should be to an equity account, so I
>have one, but when I post the proceeds of the sale of the Fund to this
>account it shows a decrease in equity which does not seem right to me.
>This transaction, a sell from a commodity (the fund) should give me an
>increase in equity. It's all ok insofar as when I then post the funds
>to the bank account from this equity account they appear as a funds
>increase in my bank account, its just that I don't see why this
>process should decrease the equity of my Trust.
>
>This thought is reinforced by the fact that if I post it to a
>liability account instead, I get a decrease in liability which makes
>perfect sense in the same way that an increase in equity make sense.
>
>I am running stable (r17949M built 2009-09-14) on unbuntu.
>
>Am I making an error or is the equity account getting the sign of the
>postings "reversed"?
>
>Thanks,
>Philip
>
>
>  
>

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.