Tracking Money in Savings Account

[Daniel Trezub]

Wayne,

no, it´s the same thing, I just used different account names. Read again:

"Every time you expend some money, create a transaction in the corresponding
liability account, with the split pointing towards the corresponding Expense
account."

I use the Liabilities accounts as a temporary placeholder for my money. This
can seem wrong, as Derek said, but it works for me, since I use GC as a
Personal Finance software and not an accountant software. So I can name my
accounts any way I wish :)

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


On 15 December 2010 16:00, Wayne Bird <wrbird at hotmail.com> 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
>
> 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:(
>
> Wayne
>
> ------------------------------
> 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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