Tracking Money in Savings Account

Wed Dec 15 14:22:51 EST 2010

Thanks Daniel.  

You're right, you can use GnuCash in any manner you wish.  That's what I did when using MSMoney.  But for me, I want to understand the "correct" way, standard accounting principles.  I know that's subjective, but my understanding of liabilities is money I currently owe, so I don't see how a liability account would fit into my scheme.  Again, I'm not saying what you doing doesn't work, it's just not using standard principles, which is what I'm trying to incorporate with GnuCash.

Wayne

From: daniel3ub at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 16:33:45 -0200
Subject: Re: Tracking Money in Savings Account
To: wrbird at hotmail.com
CC: warlord at mit.edu; gnucash-user at gnucash.org

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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