Class accounting?

[Josh Sled]

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Jeff Wiegley <jeffw at cyte.com> writes:
> I want to track expenses by store because technically
> speaking Money left me and went to McMaster Carr. My
> ultimate liability is therefore to McMaster-Carr.
>
> I think tracking by "store" (as you put it) is necessary
> for a couple of basic reasons:
>
> #1) Banks account by store. If you don't track by
> store then your gnucash bank account and your statement
> don't readily match up.  Your bank statement says you
> paid Ralphs, yet your gnucash  just says you bought
> food. You have no idea who to call/investigate when
> you come across an usual expense. (like say you drive
> a mini but you find a charge for $109.00 in "gas".
> Gas from whom? where? Oh, cross reference your bank
> statement... Let's say you also bought $109 in toys
> for your kid. It becomes a non-trivial task and prone
> to error.) All of this vendor information is lost
> if accounting solely by expense category as you suggest.
>
> #2) It is reasonable to expect somebody to say either:
> How much was my total liability to McMaster-Carr last
> year? Wow! that much? I need to find a cheaper supplier
> to replace them. While at the same time you may want to
> say, How much did I spend on the Gardening project last
> month? Wow, that's way over budget; cancel the project.
>
> I'm surprised that Gnucash can reasonably claim to
> do small business accounting if it can't track both
> vendor and project costs. I would never recommend that a
> project/contract based business use a piece of accounting
> software that cannot do both of these simultaneously.
>
> In quickbooks the feature for project costing is termed
> "class accounting." I wondered if gnucash has a similar
> feature.
>
> Your advice indicates that it does not. Thanks!
>
> - Jeff
>
> Josh Sled wrote:
>> Jeff Wiegley <jeffw at cyte.com> writes:
>>> What I've been wanting to do for a while is to account
>>> for what get's spent on each individual project better.
>> [...]
>>> If I think about like food...
>> My weekly groceries transactions usually look like:
>> Liabilities:Credit Card:Bank of Example          $100
>> Expenses:Food:Groceries                          $ 72
>> Expenses:Pet:Food                                $ 12
>> Expenses:Health & Beauty                         $  3
>> Expenses:Housewares                              $  7
>> [...]
>>
>>> I want to track project "food". I make vendor accounts for
>>> all my grocery stores and I organize them under a tree
>> Why do you care to track the expenses by store?
>> But, yes, GnuCash only makes it easy to account for one thing at a time.  We
>> suggest by expense category ("project").
>>
>
> -- 
> Jeff Wiegley, PhD
> Cyte.Com, LLC
>
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