Credit Balance on new Expense Account

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 12:36:07PM -0500, Ariel wrote:
> 
> You have at least 3 options (in reverse order of complexity):
> 
> You can do it completely off the books, like this:
> 
> Start the telephone account with a 0 balance, but artificially add (in the 
> opening balance) the same (extra) dollars to your checking account.
> 
> Everything will balance then, but you'll have to put in "fake" payments 
> from checking to telephone as each bill comes in until the credit is 
> drained.
> 
> Don't forget to make adjustments when Reconciling your checking account.
> 
> Option 2:
> 
> Put a negative opening balance (dated 12/31/06) into your telephone 
> account, then set gnucash to show you data starting from the beginning of 
> the year.

I'd pick option 2 -- isn't a negative balance just what would normally 
result from an overpayment?

-- hendrik

> 
> Option 3:
> 
> Each time you "pay" a bill to your telephone account, transfer the funds 
> from Opening Balance, until the overpayment is drained, and you have to 
> start moving money from checking instead. (You'll probably have to do a 
> split transaction during the month the account switches from over to 
> under.)
> 
> I'd go with #3.
> 
>  	-Ariel
> 
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Tad Marko wrote:
> 
> > Right, except that the actual over payment occured before the
> > beginning of my accounting period (1/1/07) out of an account that has
> > a beginning balance at that date. Maybe I can just enter the previous
> > transaction on its actual date and then make a counter deposit to the
> > affected checking account from the opening balance account?
> >
> > Tad
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 12, 2007 at 10:13:37AM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> >> You do this the exact same way as anything else.  Just effectively
> >> "over pay" the expense.
> >>
> >> -derek
> >>
> >> Quoting Tad Marko <tad at tadland.net>:
> >>
> >>> Howdy!
> >>>
> >>> I've started this year getting all my finances into GnuCash, so I have
> >>> all of my accounts starting at 1/1/2007. Whatever balances they have
> >>> at that moment is the beginning balance I enter them with. This is
> >>> working fine for credit card and bank accounts, but I have a telephone
> >>> bill that I overpaid by quite a bit last year so on 1/1/2007, it has a
> >>> substantial negative balance. I would like to track the new bills at
> >>> they whittle down this balance, showing them paid against this balance
> >>> until it is depleted. What is the best way to reflect this?  I'm
> >>> thinking that I may have to turn this into an asset account, which I
> >>> really don't want to do for this unusual circumstance.
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