Expense / account hierarchy

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Kevin Page <gnucash-list at krp.org.uk> writes:

> Hi, I'm looking for some advice/wisdom on setting up my accounts and
> categories...

Well, gnucash doesn't really support categories per se...

> I've been happily using gnucash for 16 months or so now. I started off
> by categorising my expenses by type (e.g. Groceries), but within them
> I've tended to created sub-categories for companies (e.g. a particular
> grocery company).
> 
> Basically, it seems I care not only about the type of things I spend
> my money on, but also _where_ I spent it.

Hmm, I'm not sure why you care about where, unless you're really
interested in getting volume discounts or something ;)

> This is okay, with a couple of caveats:
> - some companies sell objects from more that one higher level category
> (e.g. the grocery store also sells CDs)
> - I often spend money on bills which are then split with other people
> (e.g. my telecomms category is artificially high, because although I
> do pay our telecomms company that amount, _personally_ I'm only
> spending a split of that total with my housemates)

The split bills are harder to deal with, but you can probably do
something by having a special asset or income account based on how
much your housemates owe you.

> And I can see two solutions:
> 1) Not care! Am I really bothered about tracking both my category spend
> and how much I give to Company X

>From an accounting perspective, you generally care about the former,
not the latter.

> 2) Add an extra step to my transactions. Create a number of Liability 
> accounts to represent companies. When I spend something I create a
> split transaction which transfers the bill total from my credit card
> account to the liability account for that company, and also transfers
> out into one or more expense categories by type (and asset accounts if 
> I'm paying for other people). I can then track my own personal spending 
> by category, and look at how much I've spent with a particular company
> based on the turnover of their liability account

This is an option, but you're probably better off using the business
features.

> Is this the only sensible (!?) way to do this? Am I missing something?
> Could any of the new small business features help me?

The business feature of vendor bills would help you with #2.  You
would create a vendor bill to state which company you bought from, and
then each of your items can be the type of item you bought.  This lets
you keep track of how much you spent at a particular store (e.g. with
a particular vendor) and also how much you spent on various
categories.  Although it's really designed to keep track of how much
you owe a particular vendor, you could probably use it to determine
how much you spent with a particular vendor.

> regards,
> 
> kev

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available