Scheduled transaction formulae & splitting joint bills

Jannick Asmus jannick.news at gmail.com
Tue Apr 29 20:20:32 EDT 2008


Ian,

I am very new to GC, but I hope that my comments can be helpful.

On 29.04.2008 15:53, Josh Sled wrote:
> <ian at caption.org> writes:

>> 2) My partner and I share the cost of bills, but I pay them all.  I want a
>> method of working out how much she owes me.  Previously I have used a
>> spreadsheet that has summed all the joint payments, multiplied it by a ratio
>> (we share the expenses in proportion to our salaries) and deducted any
>> payments made to me.  Obviously, in GnuCash I want an Asset account of money
>> owed to me, but I don't want the hassle of splitting every single expense so
>> that (~)half goes in to the expense account and half to the asset account -
> 
> Welcome to double-entry accounting. :)  My partner and I practice this
> sharing as well, and it's clearly highlighted how weak the register's
> auto-fill mechanism is for this type of entry. :(

I hope I am getting the problem correctly, but you could "abuse" the 
tax-accounting mechanism for bills. Define a new taxation rule that, 
say, 30% are booked to account xyz. Then enter all your expenses into a 
vendor bill. After booking the bill all your expenses are charged to 
expenses and automatically a receivable of 30% of your expenses. BTW the 
taxation rules allow multiple assignments, i.e. it it possible to 
allocate 30 % to colleague A and, say, 40% to colleague B and so on.

>> in particular, this would be really awkward for the mortgage, where I want
>> to be able to see the full balance and not just my portion of it, and I
>> don't want the money she owes me to include her entire portion of the
>> mortgage, just her portion of everything paid in a given month.  What I've
>> tried is to create a split on the payments where, for example:
>>  
>> £20 withdrawal from bank account
>> £20 deposit to Gas expense
>> £10 deposit to Asset:Money owed to me
>> £10 withdrawal from ?
>>
>> Obviously, the money for that has to come from somewhere, otherwise it just
>> goes in to Imbalance.  I could create a new Income for this, and would be
>> happy to do so if necessary, but I was hoping there was a better way.

I think this is income, but could be netted against your expense. My tax 
accountant (I live in Germany) told me off when I set off expenses and 
revenues like this. So I do not net any more, but the pairing of revenue 
and expense accounts is coded in the account numbers. That makes it 
easier to do the setting-off later on - if needed.

> Expenses:Goodwill?  The Investopedia definition¹ has Goodwill as an Asset,
> but IANAA.
> 
> ¹: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp
> 
> 
>> Additionally, is there a way of storing the ratio used in this calculation,
>> so I could use it in a formula?  Is there a way, in fact, of using a formula
>> to automatically calculate that share (e.g. 50% of x where x is the
>> transaction above)?  If I can store that ratio, can I store it such that I
>> can change it when it needs changing without it affecting previous
>> transactions?
> 
> You could just in-line it, or create a new function in your
> ~/.gnucash/config.user ... something like:
> 
>     (define (gnc:partner-split-my-share value)
>       (* 0.6666 value))
> 
>     (define (gnc:partner-split-other-share value)
>       (* 0.3333 value))
> 
> The extra decimal places will help with some rounding, but you probably want
> to do these as actual gnc:numeric computation with explicit rounding.
> 
> 
> And, you're right, the formulÊ are only evaluated when the register entry is
> made (or the scheduled transaction is "instantiated" in the Since Last Run
> dialog), so updating the function would not affect any transactions already
> on the books.

Best wishes,
J.


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