Roommate expenses?

[FireFly]

I had thought about this quite a lot last night, trying to come up with what seemed a good solution (beyond the piece of paper tacked to the wall that we had in my apartment when I had a roommate)

So, I think my solution would be, assuming you have expense accounts for whatever the "shared" bills are, I'd create some sort of account for your roommate where you record when your roommate pays one of those shared expenses (not sure if it matters if it's a liability or asset account (at least from my perspective, accountants may disagree).

Create a sub-account on each of your accounts that you're going to pay bills from (hopefully just one account, because that makes it much easier).

Then when you reconcile you have to check that "include sub-accounts" checkbox (this is the only change you have to make for doing things) then, to determine "standing" simply compare the balance of your sub-account vs your roommates account (probably ignore the sign, especially if yours is an asset account, but your roommates is a liability) and whoever has a higher balance has paid more, so is owed money, you can simply add the two totals together, divide by two to figure out what each account SHOULD be if you had both paid the same as each other (and this works across however long you keep the accounts open).

At least that's my take.

- James Duerr

E-mail: FireFlys_98 at yahoo.com
---------------------
Discover a lost art - play Marbles. May 2004
www.marillion.com


--- On Sat, 8/29/09, Daniel Trezub <daniel3ub at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Daniel Trezub <daniel3ub at gmail.com>
> Subject: Roommate expenses?
> To: "Users Gnucash" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> Date: Saturday, August 29, 2009, 5:39 PM
> Hi, people!
> 
> I was wondering what can be the best way to track
> roommate's expenses.
> 
> I share my apartment with a roommate, and we share the
> bills. The problem is
> that we do not have a fixed way to pay the bills. Let's say
> that in one
> particular month I pay the rent, the gas and the energy
> bills, and he pays
> the phone, internet and the water bills. The other month I
> can pay the
> water, energy and phone, and he pays the rent, gas and
> internet. The values
> are then added together and divided by 2. If I pay more
> money in bills than
> him this month, he gives me money. If he pays more in bills
> than me this
> month, I give him money.
> 
> So, what is the best way to keep track of this kind of
> thing? I was thinking
> about setting an Liability Account to do that, but I
> couldn't figure out a
> right way.
> Any ideas from the accounting guys out there? :)
> 
> Cheers, and thanks!
> 
> =====
> Daniel
> http://dantrez.deviantart.com
> http://www.bandofgamers.com.br
> http://www.continue.com.br
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