Re[2]:Different debit/credit dates.

[Rusty Carruth]

Dale Alspach <alspach@math.okstate.edu> wrote:
> If the float time is critical you may want to institute some accounts
> which act like accounts payable and accounts receivable. 
> ...
> what your goal is. When you write a check do you want the
> balnce in gnucash to show that money as removed from the bank account at the
> time the check is written or at the time the bank honors the check?
> This is more or less the difference between accrual and cash accounting.

Ah, that's sheds some (accounting) light on what I've been doing, which is:

We have 2 checking accounts - one is for 'short-cycle' items (short == around
a month or less), one is for 'long-cycle' items (or monthly things that vary 
from month-to-month, like long distance phone calls, electric, etc).

I have the long-cycle checking account broken into a bunch of subaccounts
which represent the different items (electric, gas (not auto gas, that's a
short-cycle item), Christmas gifts, etc.).

The question I'm asking of gnucash for the long-cycle items is 'is there
enough money in this account to buy item <x> for $<y>.', so I want to
deduct the money from the category as soon as the check is written.

So, when we pay for something with the credit card, 4 accounts get 
involved:
	the long-cycle item's subaccount
	the item's associated expense category
	the credit card account
	the 'pay to credit card' subaccount of the long-cycle checking account.

Then, when it comes time to reconcile and pay the card off (yes, we pay
it off every month) then I write the check and the 'pay to credit card'
subaccount and the credit card account are involved.

The main (maybe only) downside I've found to this approach is that
I have a bunch of offsetting transactions in my credit card reconcilation
window (that is, the 'pay to credit card' and the long-cycle item's 
subaccount).

Oh - wait!  There is one SERIOUS downside to doing this, but its
not directly related to the 'pay to credit card' subaccount - its
caused by the fact that, when I want to know what the balance is
in the long-cycle checking account there is no simple way to get
it printed, and you don't EVEN want to try to see the balance 
when you print the register - the account balance on the register
is ONLY for the subaccount, and you don't really HAVE one of those...
(you only have the aggregation of all those subaccounts, and I've
not seen a way to get that info printed)

> ...
> >Hi,
> 
> >I just started using gnucash.  I'm also new to accounting.
> 
> >When I move money between accounts (bank to bank, bank to credit card,
> >Paypal to bank, etc.), the source account is normally debited a few
> >days before the destination account is credited (and sometimes, the
> >other way around.)  This seems to be a pretty common phenomenon.  How
> >can I entered this correctly (and, hopefully, conveniently) in
> >gnucash?

As Dale indicated. if you don't really care about the float, you
could simply not bother.  I suppose those living that close to
the edge (or moving a large enough amount around) might either
want to go to the hassle of 4-entry bookkeeping similar to what
I do (rather than the standard double-entry gnucash does ;-),
or perhaps write a script to parse the gnucash file and provide
you with an indication of how much $ is floating at that point
in time (and for what accounts).   That might be an interesting
report....

(In the above, when I say 'printed' I mean on paper, not displayed
on the screen.  Most of the info IS available onscreen, but there
are a few important numbers that you simply cannot ask gnucash
to print - you have to resort to screen capture if its available
onscreen, else you are stuck.)

rc