Virtual accounts?

[Maf. King]

On Thursday 25 January 2007 23:24, Jörg Schaible wrote:

<SNIP>

> Thanks guys for all your recommendations, I already played with it. What I
> still don't get is how to handle expenses for those pots. When I pay
> something the money is spent from one of
>
>  Assets:Savings
>  Assets:Checking Account
>  Assets:Purse
>
> For the normal balance the expenses would be assigned to
>
>  Expenses:Car
>  Expenses:Computer
>  Expenses:Health
>
> How can I match those when I have created the pots as sub-accounts like
>
>  Assets:Savings:Car
>  Assets:Savings:Computer
>  Assets:Savings:Health
>
> ... and created transactions between the pot and their parent. Maybe I just
> don't know enough about GC2 - can I create a report for these pots,
> something along

Not exactly sure waht you mean, here - I handle an expense as a transfer from 
Assets:Savings:Car to Expenses:Car, and not involve the parent at all. 

If you have 2 savings txns, ie money goes into Assets:Savings and then into 
Assets:Savings:Car, then that intermediate transaction can't be reconciled 
against the bank, because the bank didn't see it. You'll have to see that 
yourself in the reconcile window, and cross off the matching date/total 
pairs. 

>
> Car:
> 1st of month balance: 10000
> transactions
> end of month balance: 10200
>
> Computer:
> 1st of month balance: 1000
> transactions
> end of month balance: 830
>
> ... ?
>

Try the transaction report, select the pots accounts and put the date range as 
required.  The report can even sub-total by month. not 100% sure it will give 
you what you need, but I think it will be your friend. 

> Although it would be nice to get the current balance of the pot looking at
> the accounts page.
>

See my tip to David Brown earlier in the thread about adding the current 
balance to the accounts tree view.

> > Another possible option is to make the parent account a "placeholder" so
> > that it never gets any transactions at all, and everything _has_ to be in
> > a sub-account.
>
> Won't work with an online account .. or? When I get my online transactions
> (using the HBCI module) they are already tied to the physical account ...
>

True, I guess.  I'm not familiar with the HBCI import, but you could always 
hand-edit the imported transactions to put them directly into the pots  - 
after all, the pots are your own and the bank doesn't know about them!

HTH,
Maf.

> - Jörg
>