cash: avoid "double count"

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Uwe Brauer wrote:

>Hello
>
>I think everybody must have faced a similar problem.
>
>Now I faced with the following problem:
>
>Suppose I withdraw 50 dollars and buy a book for 45 dollars and later a
>coffee for 5 dollars.
>
>How shall I present that in gnucash? 
>
>    - If  I represent  the  50  dollars  as a  transfer  from  my
>      checking account to my cash_in_wallet, and
>
>
>    -  If I later put the 45 in the expense accounts (books) and
>       5 in expense account (restaurant),
>
>In the cash flow the 50 dollars appear twice!!
>
>
>The only solution I found was to create an expense account called
>cash and various sub accounts for the individual expenses. 
>  
>
Yes everybody (including businesses) has come up against this "problem" 
and the usual solution is called "petty cash". I haven't ever used the 
built in "cash in wallet" feature so don't know if it functions as a 
proper "petty cash" account. The point is that when done properly, both 
a "current account" (bank) and "petty cash" are both cash accounts and a 
transfer between them is NOT a "cash flow" item. Just like if you have 
two checking accounts transferring money from one to the other would not 
be a cash flow item.

Michael