Class accounting -- how I do it.

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2007 at 03:41:28AM -0700, Jeff Wiegley wrote:
> 
> here's the summary: I need project accounting.

Here's how I do it.  It's simple.  And I think it does what you need.  
It doesn't even use the memo field.  It's the reason I got excited about 
gnucash in the first place, and probably the reason double-entry 
bookkeeping was invented in rennaissance Italy in the first place.  The 
Americal Mathematical Society has an entire article about this on their 
History of Mathematics pages -- double-entry bookkeeping is related to 
the invention of negative numbers.

Here's how it works:

I have an account for each vendor -- a Liabilities account.

I have an account for each project -- an Expense account.

When I place an order, I transfer the price between the project and the 
vendor -- thus establishing an expense for the project and a liability 
to the vendor.

When I pay the order, I transfer the amount between my bank account and 
the vendor's liability account, thus paying down the liability and 
reducing my bank account balance.  This payment could pay for purchases 
made for several several different projects without using a split.  The 
payment doesn't even need to know which purchases it's for.

Sometimes all these transactions happen on the same day, sometimes not.  
If not, it keeps track of how much I owe the vendors, which provides a 
useful disincentive to spending the money in other other ways.

-- hendrik