Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Daniel Trezub]

I forgot to say: you can always know how muck gas you have left in each
"envelope" just looking at the account actual value :)

You can do all this using the budget system in GnuCash. tough I never got it
to show the reports in a decent way (i.e. i cannot change the report´s style
and nobody seems to know why it happen).

=====
Daniel Trezub
http://www.gameblogs.com.br


On 15 December 2010 14:43, Daniel Trezub <daniel3ub at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Wayne.
>
> Actually, you are working with Income and Expenses accounts, but you didn´t
> know it :)
>
> What I´d do:
> Create a Liability account for every category you have. These will be your
> envelopes.
> In your paycheck transaction, create a split for each category you have,
> pointing towards the corresponding Liability account.
>
> Every time you expend some money, create a transaction in the corresponding
> liability account, with the split pointing towards the corresponding Expense
> account.
>
> Also, reading the docs Derek suggested is aways a good idea ;)
>
> Good Luck!
> =====
> Daniel Trezub
> http://www.gameblogs.com.br
>
>
> On 15 December 2010 14:07, Wayne Bird <wrbird at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thanks Derek for your reply!
>>
>> Yes, define "standard accounting method" -- good question:)  Granted,
>> everyone has their own way of doing things, however it appears the most
>> common method is tracking assets, income, expense, etc. where income is
>> viewed separately from expenses.  For example, my paycheck would just go
>> into an income account and that's it.  Then I would track all my expenses
>> through various expense accounts.  On the other hand,  I have always used
>> the envelope system, divvying out my paycheck into these various categories.
>>  So these categories (or accounts) can be seen as both income (because I'm
>> splitting my paycheck/income into these categories) and expense (because I'm
>> purchasing items from these categories).  This is what makes the most sense
>> to my little brain:) and that's why I'm having difficulty with "standard"
>> accounting methods because they have to be separate.
>>
>> I'm sure I'm making this more difficult than it should be, so if you
>> please continue to with me I'll use the suggestion of subaccounts that each
>> of you made and go from there.  I haven't had a chance yet to look into
>> this, but I will soon.  So as Derek, as John Mason stated, is your checking
>> account just a placeholder for all the subaccounts?  What John stated made
>> sense to me and this is what I'll try first.
>>
>> Again, thanks all of you for holding my hand through this!!  I greatly
>> appreciate your help.  As I continue down this road I'm sure I'll have more
>> questions.
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>>
>> > From: warlord at MIT.EDU
>> > To: wrbird at hotmail.com
>> > CC: adardis at gmail.com; jmason at masondrywall.com;
>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>> > Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account
>> > Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:09:24 -0500
>> >
>> > Wayne Bird <wrbird at hotmail.com> writes:
>> >
>> > > Thanks so much for your help!  I will continue to play around, and I'm
>> sure I'll be back with more questions.
>> > >
>> > > Though I used the envelope system in the past, it seems that's not the
>> > > standard accounting method.  I tweaked MSMoney for years in order to
>> > > make it "act" like an envelope system and I don't want to tweak
>> > > GnuCash to do this, I'd rather just learn how GnuCash is designed to
>> > > be used and use it accordingly.
>> >
>> > Define "standard accounting method"?  It's certainly one way that many
>> > people do it.  GnuCash doesn't need to be tweaked to do this.  In fact
>> > it's somewhat designed to support this!  See, for example, the "Open
>> > Subaccounts" option on the reconcile dialog.  This lets you reconcile
>> > a Bank Account with subaccounts.
>> >
>> > You can also look at the Budget features of GnuCash, but I've never used
>> > them myself so I cannot comment on them.
>> >
>> > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
>> > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>> >
>> > -derek
>> >
>> > --
>> >        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>> >        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>> >        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>> >        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>>
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>
>