Categorization of transactions

cl c-a-l at earthlink.net
Wed Apr 8 23:25:36 EDT 2009


Eric Anopolsky <erpo41 <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> On Sat, 2009-03-07 at 09:51 +0100, Manfred Usselmann wrote:
> > expenses
> >  - travelling
> >    - cars
> >      - car 1
> >        - fuel
> >        - insurance
> >        - tax
> >        - ...
> >      - car 2
> >        - fuel
> >        - insurance
> >        - tax
> >        - ...
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Using placeholder expense accounts as a substitute for classes works
> well for small numbers of "classes" and when the number of child expense
> accounts is small. 
> 
> I have four properties that each have their associated expenses. Here
> are some problems I run into when the number of placeholder expense
> accounts and the number of child accounts per placeholder grows:
> 
> *The accounts list becomes huge. Four properties times seven expense
> accounts per property equals 28 expense accounts, not counting
> placeholders. Also, since they're deeply nested, I have to do a lot of
> unfolding to see them.
> 
> *Since the placeholder accounts represent properties, it's easy to see
> how much I'm spending on each property by looking at the accounts list.
> However, since I have four different accounts called "Electrical
> Service", I have to run a report or get out a calculator to figure out
> how much I'm spending on that type of utility.
> 
> *As I develop properties further, it's becoming a chore to keep expense
> account names synchronized between properties. For example, we had some
> plumbing problems in a house that had previously needed no work in that
> area. I created a plumbing child account to keep track of those
> expenses, only to discover that for another house I had been granular
> enough to break it down into kitchen, bathroom, and general. To keep a
> consistent account hierarchy, I had to create new accounts and
> reclassify each of those transactions I had entered for the first
> property.
> 
> *Since Gnucash does not have the ability to tell the difference between
> a placeholder account that someone is using as a class (such as "car1"
> in the above example) and a placeholder account that is not being used
> as a class (such as "expenses" or "travelling"), there is no way for
> Gnucash to create a "profit and loss by class" report automatically.
> 
> Cheers,
> Eric

 
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I have the exact same problem as Eric with multiple properties.  I thought I
would try to convert 16 years of data from Quicken (currently using '99) to
GnuCash.  My reasoning is that after 10 years it is probably time to upgrade
before the data format is so old that upgrading becomes a problem.  My reasoning
for GnuCash is that I like the double entry accounting and it seems, on the
surface to offer some needed business functions.

The GnuCash 2.2.7 documentation seems to indicate that the class field is being
imported from the qif file into GnuCash, but I cannot figure out how to see and
use this data if it is really there.  If I cannot solve this problem, I cannot
use GnuCash.  I'm quite familiar with double entry accounting, as I often deal
with it at work.  However, those accounting systems also allow job and project
accounting - double entry and classes are not mutually exclusive. 

I've poked around the vendor/job field to see if that would do the job, but
either I'm not understanding how to use it or it is not able to really
categorize expenses by job without going through the entire vendor setup stuff.
 I don't need all that - the GnuCash register does well at remembering and
autofilling the vendors.

I'm open to different ways to skin the cat, but I can't lose and/or reenter 16
years of class and subclass data for all my rental properties.  I'm hoping
someone can point me in the proper direction so I can make GnuCash work for my
needs.   

Thanks
cl



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