Tracking Money in Savings Account

Wed Dec 15 13:14:50 EST 2010

Hi,

On Wed, December 15, 2010 1:00 pm, Wayne Bird wrote:
>
> Hello Daniel,
>
> Ah, this seems to be a bit different then what Derek was saying.  If I
> understood Derek correctly (the big "if"), he has two accounts for the
> same item; Asset:Bank:Movies and Liability:Expense:Movies.  So
> transactions would go something like this: Add paycheck to
> Income:Paycheck; transfer Income:Paycheck to Asset:Bank:Movies.  Purchase
> movie, transfer Asset:Bank:Movies to Liability:Expense:Movies

Not quite.  For one thing there's no such thing as "Add paycheck to
Income:Paycheck".  The first step is purely "Transfer from Income:Paycheck
to Assets:Bank".  Also, there is no such account as
"Liability:Expense:Movies".  It's purely "Expense:Movies".

> If I understand what you're saying, there is only one account,
> Liability:Expense:Movies.  So transactions would be as follows: Add
> paycheck to Income:Paycheck; transfer Income:Paycheck to
> Liability:Expense:Movies.  Now when I purchase a movie what do I do?  I
> can't transfer from Liability:Expense:Movies to Liability:Expense:Movies.
> I'm sorry if am a bit dense (or a lot), please hang with me and I'll get
> it.  And I've read a lot of the documentation before I started this
> thread.  So I guess that proves how dense I am:(

This is absolutely the WRONG way to do it.  There is no Liability here.

> Wayne

-derek

> From: daniel3ub at gmail.com
> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:43:43 -0200
> Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account
> To: wrbird at hotmail.com
> CC: warlord at mit.edu; gnucash-user at gnucash.org
>
> 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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