Deposits as Liabilities or other?

[Maf. King]

On Monday 19 Jun 2006 11:52, Ian S. Worthington wrote:
> Hi.
>

<SNIP>
> 1. Set the currency to have no decimals -- I'm working in a currency that
> doesn't have a fractional component.
>

This is my only suggestion for 1.  - You can set this on a per-account basis.  
(I'm still using 1.8.x, YMMV!)
>From the account tree listing, select an account and then edit from the 
toolbar.  There is an option for "Smallest Fraction", which you can set to 1. 
I think that will do what you need.

> 2. My wife's family, for whom this is for, rents widgets to a small number
> of people. To rent a widget during the day costs, say $40 and during the
> night costs $38.  In addition there is some sort of deposit/savings plan
> associated with each rental of $2, which is held against damages and
> returned at year end, or when the cutomer closes their account. (If you
> think this is odd, you're not alone.)
>
> My first though was to create a Liability to each customer and split the
> money received to Assets:Cash and Liabilities:customer, but then I actually
> have more cash than the account shows.
>
> Can someone suggest what the correct procedure here is?
>

Well, Presumably your wife's family owns the widgets, so there should be some 
sort of asset account to reflect their value. (eg Assets:Widgets)

Since GC doesn't do inventory for you, you could *maybe* split this into 2 
sub-accounts, (rentable and rented) to reflect the number of widgets that are 
"in stock" at any one time.

When someone rents a widget, I think you need to reflect rental income and 
liability of the deposit.  This sort of thing may work for you :

Income:Rental		40.00
Liability:Deposits	 2.00
Asset:Bank(or Cash)		42.00
Assets:Widget:rentable		-1
Assets:Widget:rented		+1

What this will not show you (easily) is how much deposit is held for any 
particular customer.  You could do this by sub-accounts under the liability 
tree, or if the number of customers is small enough, do it by hand using 
reports with the customer name in the memo field.

HTH, $0.02, IANAA etc.
Maf.


> Thanks,
>
> Ian
> ...
>
>
> Ian S Worthington
> ...
>
>
>
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-- 
Maf. King
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