Payable Liabilities to expenses via assets (how to) ?

[Raphaël Maville]

Goody evening,

Perhaps my question is trivial, and is yet answered some were else, but
I did not find.


Well, I will better explain what I mean with an example, before my
questions on HOW TO set and use it:

I have three accounts:
- Liabilities:Account_Payable:XXX
- Assets:Bank:YYY
- Expenses:ZZZ

I have a monthly transaction, with the prices known and given at the
beginning of the year.

I use to have the Bank accounts to be exactly the same as the monthly
bank statements: the lines have to be the same, no more lines. I prefer
to use GnuCash like this, It is easier to follow my bank accounts.

I want the transaction to be in an expense account, because I have to
make a yearly Income-Expenses book to calculate the Year Benefits,
needed to calculate the Tax on Benefits I have to pay for the year.

I would like to have an Assets-Liabilities book too, because... I want
to! (it is hard to explain).

With a loan, when I borrow some money, the money comes from an income
account to an asset account (bank) and then goes to an expense account
when I buy something (please forget the interests in this example), and
with a liability account: the loan to pay!

But in the present case, I do not know if I can create a payable
liability account like I want, because the money that I want to put in
it at the beginning of the year comes from no where (it could be the
main problem ?), and I don't have the money in an asset account nor an
income account to transfer in, it is fully "virtual".

I understand that with a single transaction, I cannot write what I want!

So:
- Can I and How to write this ? With several single transactions ? With
a splitted transaction ? Several splitted transactions ? How to write it
to have these in three accounts in fact (assets, liabilities,
expenses) ?
- How to schedule these transactions ?
- Should I better use the Business menu, set a vendor, with a date of
happening, etc. ?

There is a chapter in the tutorial, but I have still tried, and lost...
The result is not what I want.

At last, to me, it is a bit confusing to separate business
customer/vendor -sometime for the same person or company -, separate too
from the scheduled transactions...


Thanks for reading, and perhaps for help.


@+

rafmav




Post scriptum: In France, you can follow small businesses accounts by
two ways ("independent workers", artisans, liberal professions:
physicians, nurses...) of accounting: Income-Expenses
("recettes-depenses"), or Assets-Liabilities ("actif-passif", better
named "creances-dettes"). With this, at the end of the year, you can
calculate and declare your benefits, and then the state calculates your
tax on benefit... The one to choose (income-expenses or
assets-liabilities) depends on the job you do (exception: employees) and
how comes and goes the money (if you have a lot of customers which owe
you money, and a lot of liabilities to pay, the assets-liabilities is
better that the income-expenses)...