how to view total for expenses subaccount

Girard Aquino girardaquino at hotmail.com
Thu Oct 30 01:13:09 EDT 2008


hendrik at topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 02:20:28AM +0000, Girard Aquino wrote:
>   
>> Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
>>     
>>> Girard Aquino wrote:
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Hi. I need help trying to produce a report for our monthly expenses 
>>>> for one of the Expenses subaccounts. I don't have any problems with 
>>>> transactions I pay for using my debit/checking account because this 
>>>> is easily tracked by Reports>Income&Expense>Cash Flow. My problem is 
>>>> with transactions i pay for using my credit card. When iIdownload my 
>>>> CC transaction history they all go to liabilities>CC, and I transfer 
>>>> the CC transactions to their respective Expenses subaccount such as 
>>>> Groceries, Dining, Auto>Gas, etc....
>>>>         
>>> Correct --- you "book" the expense as the liability is assumed (date 
>>> of the credit card transaction)
>>>
>>>       
>>>> Then when I pay for the CC bill for the month, I use my 
>>>> checking/debit which lowers my liabilities. But then, I lose track of 
>>>> how much of the liability in CC went to what Expenses subaccount.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Why? Can't see how you lose anything here. You are paying off part (or 
>>> all) of the liability (credit card debt). At this time there is no 
>>> connect to how/why the liability came into existence.
>>>       
>> I see your point there. But I would like to keep track of how much we 
>> are spending on each of the Expenses subaccounts (i.e. Groceries) for 
>> the current month.
>>     
>
> The month in which it is an expense is the month in which you go to the 
> grocery store and buy the broccoli.  It is an expense then, regardless 
> of whether you pag for it with a credit card, a debit card, a cheque, 
> or cash.  So that's the month in which you record it onto the Expense 
> account.  That's the moment at shich you incur the debt or reduce your 
> assets.  If you are trying to balance your income with your expenses so 
> as to remain solvent, that's the moment when you have to decide whether 
> you can afford the broccoli; that's the month that the purchase counts 
> against your budget.
>
> The advantage of credit cards, from a merchant's point of view is that 
> the customer doesn't feel the pain of being short of cash; using the 
> card feels a little like free money.  But it still costs you, and if you 
> are limiting monthly expenses to a particular amount, it's the decisions 
> you make in that month that should be the ones that count.  Otherwise 
> you are racking up debts outside of budget control.
>
> If you wait to consider it an expense when you pay the credit card, you 
> lose the ability to let the budget limit your expenses.  You're already 
> stuck paying it -- based on a decision you made when you weren't really 
> considering an expense.
>
> This is the reason I switched to gnucash long ago -- because it could 
> record expenses when I actually incurred them, not when I finaly got 
> around to paying off my bills.  I had been using an old version of 
> Quicken before that, and it always bothered me that expenses were always 
> within income -- because anything over budget didn't show up as an 
> expense until I actually paid it -- no matter how high the pile of bills 
> on my bill pile.  Recording expenses when I actually paid them was 
> giving me a false picture of my financial health.
>
>   
>> So while I am able to transfer and therefore 
>> categorize the CC transactions into the different Expenses subaccounts, 
>> I am not able to track how much of the money from my checking which goes 
>> into paying the Liabilities>CC actually goes into what Expenses 
>> subaccount. This is because a CC bill of 600, simply shows as a single 
>> CC payment from checking into Liabilities>CC. But how much of that 600 
>> went into Groceries, Gas, etc... I cannot view (or cannot figure out 
>> how, until now) using the reports (Thank you Robert!!!)
>>     
>
> It already went into groceries when you bought the broccoli.  That's the 
> time it's relevant to the budget.
>
>   
>>>> Or one could say that I lose track of how much of the CC payment went 
>>>> to what Expenses subaccount. I was trying to view how much we were 
>>>> spending on groceries for the month, but realized the report I 
>>>> produced with Reports>Income&Expense>Cash Flow
>>>>         
>
> The cash flew when you got the broccoli.  It's already gone by the time 
> you pay the credit card.
>
>   
And this is exactly why I want to be able to include Liabilities in the 
Cash Flow report.
>>>> was inaccurate because 
>>>> of this. Any tips on how to go about this? Thank you.
>>>>         
>
> -- hendrik
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