Cash Withdrawal for expenses

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>The way I do it is to have a "cash" account.  The withdrawals from bank are 
>deposited into this account.  The expenses towards petrol, groceries, etc. 
>are made from the cash account.  That way there is single entry for cash 
>withdrawal from bank; it is transferred to cash account - deposit into cash 
>account.  There are multiple withdrawal/debit entries for expenses from the 
>cash account.  
>
>Reconciliation happens for the single entry of cash withdrawal from Bank.  The 
>expenses are from cash account and not directly from bank (as in reality).
>
>  
>
For those wanting to look this up in the typical "Accounting 101" book 
the term usually used for this in business is "petty cash". Back in the 
old days of pen an ink on paper bookkeeping would usually have its own 
"cashbook" (a multi-column substitute for the two column "journal") to 
save having to post each small purchase individually. But with the 
automatic posting of an automated system like GnuCash, a simple "cash" 
account would be easy.

NOTE: You do the reverse of this to handle money coming in. A single 
physical bank deposit might contain checks from many different income 
sources. One solution to maintain meaningful descriptive entries is to 
enter the checks on the date received into an "undeposited funds" 
account and then when you finally get to the bank to make the deposit, 
transfer from here to the bank account.

Michael