Re Handling GST & PST from Credit Card transactions

[Derrick Ashby]

Russell,

I agree that GST is a bit of a pain in gnucash, but it is do-able.  You 
have to create the split transaction yourself.  This is easy if you 
regularly deal with only a few vendors, since gnucash defaults to the 
last transaction you did with the same description.  You then only need 
to balance each transaction where the amounts are different.  I 
personally use a little spreadsheet to calculate the GST / Ex GST split, 
not having previously twigged to the fact that gnucash accepted formulas 
in amount fields.  If you desperately need to capture vendor information 
other than via the description line, I guess you could create a 
subaccount for each vendor, although that could become a pain if you 
also have lots of expenses accounts. 

 From a business point of view, if you are claiming GST back from the 
government, don't listen to the people who tell you that it goes in a 
Liability account.  Claimable GST is an asset.  Non-Claimable GST is an 
expense.  GST paid to you by a customer is a Liability, because it's not 
your money - it's the government's.

Down here in Australia we are able to use cash accounting, so I in fact 
have two GST Liability accounts - GST Collected and GST Receivable.  GST 
Receivable is the GST that I am required to collect once the invoice 
gets paid (this is processed automatically by gnucash), and GST 
Collected is the money that has actually been collected.  This requires 
me to remember to do a transfer from the one to the other when I process 
a payment!

Derrick