Two expense accounts for one transaction?

Linas Vepstas linas@linas.org
Mon, 10 Sep 2001 10:41:19 -0500


On Mon, Sep 10, 2001 at 03:47:34PM +0200, paul.poulain@free.fr was heard to remark:
> At 09:26 10/09/01 -0400, Paul Lussier wrote:
> 
> >In a message dated: 09 Sep 2001 12:35:24 CDT Matt Kowske said:
> >
> > >Question:
> > >
> > >Is it possible to enter an expense transaction under two seperate
> > >accounts and have it only count once?  Here is the situation:  I have an
> > >Expense:Auto:Gas account to keep track of how much money I spend on gas,
> > >but I also have a Expense:Travel account that I use to keep track of how
> > >much I spend on traveling.  Now when I use my car to travel and I have
> > >to buy gas to do that, I would like it to record that as both a Travel
> > >expense and a Auto:Gas expense.  Is this possible, without making my
> > >monthly expense report be inaccurate?  Could it somehow only record that
> > >I made the expense once, but under two different categores? TIA
> >
> >You know, that's an interesting problem.  I was actually
> >contemplating something similar last week, where I'd like to be able
> >to track vacation expenses the same way.  I have Expenses:Dining and
> >Expenses:Auto:Gas, both of which could also be used while I'm on
> >vacation, but unless I log them separately under something like
> >Expenses:Vacation:Auto:Gas, etc., there's no telling what expenses
> >are normal expenses or vacation related.
> 
> Very interesting problem indeed...
> 
> In accounting, there are 2 differents things :
> * standard accounting : when you enter a standard account, for a 
> transaction, you explain the *nature* of the transaction : you buyed gas, 
> you buyed food.
> * analytic accounting : when you enter an analytic account (it's a 2nd kind 
> of account, which must be entered after the standard one), you explain the 
> *destination* of this transaction : you buyed gas for your car, or the car 
> of your wife, for personal use or for work-mov, you buyed food for 
> yourself, of for your son who is living in it's own ...
> Analytic account is never mandatory, and is useful in large companies (for 
> example, you buy a computer for sales-dep. You enter the transaction with 
> standard account *computer*, and analytic account *sales-dep*). I don't 
> think it's done in GnuCash...

The 'action' field in the register was intended to provide this
function.   The intent was to allow the user to check of one or more 
'categories' (which could be custom-hand-entered).   One of the reports
was supposed to allow you to sort and add things up by category.

Except that its broken right now .... you can't add your own custom
'actions' (they're hard-coded in), you can't pick multiple ones, and
there's no report that deals with them .... :-(

--linas