Class accounting?

[Jeff Wiegley]

I have bank accounts and I buy lots of stuff for various
personal projects.

What I've been wanting to do for a while is to account
for what get's spent on each individual project better.

In quicken I might do this with categories but that doesn't
seem to be a very sophisticated method of doing it. And
besides, Gnucash doesn't have categories.

I can make accounts for the various vendors that I buy from
and for my credit/checking accounts that I pay for this with
and I know how to basic double-entry so that a purchase made
appears in the bank/credit account and also in the vendor
account.

The problem is I want it tied to a project "account" as well.
I guess I could insert a second, equal transaction. one
between the bank account and the project and a second between
the project and the vendor. But this seems really cumbersome
and now your gnucash bank account doesn't look anything
remotely like your bank statement.

How does one handle this?
If I think about like food...

I want to track project "food". I make vendor accounts for
all my grocery stores and I organize them under a tree
account called food. great now may bank statement looks
like my gnucash accounts. If the bank statement says I made
a purchase at Ralph's (a California grocery store) then
the gnucash account shows a credit in the checking account
and a debit in the Ralph's account. and I can say how much
did I spend on food, since Ralph's is categorized under food?

The problem is that this doesn't extend to projects.

Let's say I have two projects, "Doomsday weapon" and
"gardening robot". Both projects are independent from
one another, both are funded by the same set of asset accounts
and both require electrical and mechanical components to
complete.

I buy lot of stuff from a company called McMaster-Carr
(they sell just about every basic industrial electrical or
mechanical component under the sun in 1400 page catalog.)

But I can't put the McMaster account under "doomsday weapon"
because then all purchases for the gardening project also
get accounted for under the doomsday project. I can't put
McMaster under the gardening project for the symmetric
argument.

So it doesn't fit the food model. (Even the Food model
doesn't work because I might want to account for food I
bought for myself versus food I bought for guests as gifts
under projects and such. I.E. not everything I buy at
Ralph's is consumed ultimately paid for by me but rather my
roommate.)

How does one account for project expenditures under GnuCash?

Thanks,

- Jeff

-- 
Jeff Wiegley, PhD
Cyte.Com, LLC