Proper usage / organisation of sub-accounts?

[Maf. King]

On Thursday 02 November 2006 16:53, Andy Gimblett wrote:
> Hi all,

Hi Andy, 

<SNIP>

> Expenses
>   Groceries
>     Alcohol
>
> Here the intent is to track spending on alcohol separately from "all
> the rest of my groceries".  Thus, for example, I might set up a split
> where:
>

> An alternative, which seems less natural to me, would be:
>
>   Groceries
>     Alcohol
>     Other Groceries
>

>From memory, the reports will give you "nested" subtotals - 
so in the former case, you won't directly see how much "other" grocery you 
bought, only the total grocery spend, and the sub-total for alcohol.

In the second case, you'll get a subtotal for both alcohol and other, and also 
a total for groceries.


>
> The other context where I'm thinking about this is assets.
> Specifically, I'm thinking that a single bank account is of course
> used for several purposes, and it would be nice to partition them
> accordingly (at least to some extent)...
>

I have done this in a savings account.

> For example, if I want to earmark part of my checking account each
> month for, say, clothing, one way to do it would be to make a
> sub-account there and put part of my paycheck in the clothing
> sub-account.  But if the amount in that "child" account isn't also
> counted in the parent account (which is supposed to reflect the actual
> bank account), the parent account's balance will no longer match the
> balance reported by the bank - which isn't really want I want, is it?
>

The balance in the top-level accounts view will be correct.  The value of any 
of the virtual "pots of money" won't (and can't) reflect the actual value of 
the sum of all the "pots".  When you reconcile, the checkbox along the lines 
of "include sub-accounts" is your friend.....

Hope my 2p is of some use,
Maf.


> Hopefully this makes sense to someone.  :-) Thanks in advance for any
> help or advice!
>
> Best,
>
> Andy