Is saving goals possible?

[David Brown]

Alan Hartless wrote:

> Is there a feature in gnucash for saving goals?  For example, I have a
> savings account with one lump sum of money.  But I want to be able to
> separate that sum into goals.  Let's say I have two thousand dollars in
> my savings account.  I want a way to be able to look and see that I have
> 300 towards a laptop, 700 towards summer cash, and 1000 towards
> emergency cash.
>
> I thought that maybe I could use gnucash's double entry to do this.  But
> can't get it to work the way I want.  Here is a "concept map" for what
> needs to happen separated by transactions.

I create subaccounts for each of the goals, and then transfer money out of
savings into these goal accounts.  That way, I see the lower balance in my
savings account.  These transactions never reconcile with the savings
statement from the bank, so the bank statement still looks fine.  When you
are ready to purchase, move the money out of the goal account and back to
savings, or wherever it is needed (best as two steps, so the bank statement
still has something to reconcile against.

Dave