Account Breakdown

[Kevin Johnson]

New user, switching from MS Money, and I am looking for suggestions on how
to set up accounts to reflect the information which I use to capture by
using the sub-categories. I included examples below and options on how I
think accounts could be set up to capture this information. I am looking for
pro/cons of my samples as well as possible different suggestions from
experienced users. I have searched the archives covering the past few years
and did not find anything which I felt specifically answered all my
questions.

 

Tracking expenses on individual trips, but still account for a breakdown of
those expenses, such as dining out and sporting activities which I also have
expenses which would not be associated with an individual trip:

 

Option 1:

 

Expenses:Food:Dining Out

:Vacation 1

:Vacation 2

Expenses:Sports:Skiing

:Vacation 1

 

Option 2:

 

Expenses:Food:Dining Out

:Sports:Skiing

Expenses:Vacation 1:Food:Dining Out

:Sports:Skiing

Expenses:Vacation 2:Food:Dining Out

 

Option 2 has the advantage of grouping all the expenses to a vacation
together for an easy overall look at what was spent on each vacation. Option
1 groups costs by activities/category across all expenses

 

Another expense area is assigning costs for automobiles to the actual
vehicle incurring the cost while still being able to see the overall
automobile cost

 

Option 1:

Expenses:Automobile: Maintenance:Car 1

            :Car 2

Expenses:Automobile:Petrol:Car 1

            :Car 2

Expenses:Autormobile:Insurance:Car 1

            :Car 2

 

Option 2:

Expenses:Automobile:Car 1

            :Maintenance

            :Petrol

            :Insurance

Expenses:Automobile:Car 2

            :Maintenance

            :Petrol

            :Insurance

 

Another example would be salary income. (Although since typically this
should only be a single employer source at a time perhaps just noting the
employer in the memo section would contain enough information):

 

Option 1:

Income:Wages:Employer 1

            :Employer 2

            :Employer 3

Income:Bonus:Employer 1

:Employer 3

 

Option 2:

Income:Employer 1:Wages

            :Bonus

Income:Employer 2:Wages

Income:Employer 3:Wages

            :Bonus

 

As I can tell in these samples both options are reasonable ways to set up
the account structure. I would really like to hear from the community how
people set their accounts up and what they see as the pros/cons and issues
when using the data with each of the setups. So far I really like the
functionality of gnuCash and have finally finished cleaning up the data from
the import process. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and work on
this application.

 

Cheers-

 

KJ