Travel Expense Advice...

[Alan Anderson]

David,

Thanks for the prompt response.  I hadn't thought of using the Action field,
but it certainly seems like a simple approach--depending on what is needed.
The only catch might be that if the field is used for something else I
cannot enter a new action--right?!  For example, if I write a check while on
the trip, I would want to put the check number in the Action field, but I
couldn't put both the check number and a trip identifier--correct me if I'm
wrong.

Anyway, it got me thinking about what exactly I want to accomplish;
unfortunately, now I'm just more confused. ;)  There are two aspects of what
I want to accomplish.  The first is to track expenses associated with this
particular trip.  While I'm not getting directly reimbursed--I'm
self-employed--I do need to know what expenses were associated with that
trip.  In a former life, I would simply fill out an expense report and
submit it to my employer.  Now, I just want to be able to give a similar
expense report to my tax accountant--although it might be nice to see how it
all fits together if I'm doing multiple trips per year.  I guess I was
thinking of entering the transactions into GnuCash and then running a report
that generated an expense report-like result.

The second is to keep my bank balances reconciled.  Using a trip-specific
account solves this problem, but it also changes all of my remembered
transactions--and I have quite a few.  I could give each description an
extra string of text, but that requires me to be very fastidious about
entering the same string.

Right now, I have 100 or more receipts to enter, so I'm a little daunted by
the task.  I especially do not want to have to reenter all of the receipts
if I decide there's a better approach later.  I'm also not that keen on
entering them all as split transactions because that seems a little tedious
as well.  Having said all of that, in the time I spent researching this, I
could probably have entered all of the transactions and been done. ;)

I didn't follow the Tag/Categories discussion too deeply, but in retrospect
I could see how that might work.  I could tag each of the transactions with
a trip-specific identifier, and then they would be easier to find later.
This could make generating an expense report easier to because you would
simply filter by tag and then sort/aggregate by account.

Thanks again.

Al


On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 1:02 PM, David Reiser <dbreiser at earthlink.net>wrote:

>
> On Dec 31, 2010, at 2:06 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
>
> > I'm looking for the best way to deal with transactions that have multiple
> > purposes.  For example, I recently traveled for work, and I collected a
> ton
> > of receipts for gas, food, and groceries.  I want to enter them as I
> > normally would--in both A:Checking and E:Auto:Gas, etc.  But, I also want
> to
> > be able to pull out those specific transactions as having been part of
> that
> > specific trip, so that I can itemize those expenses separately.  My
> initial
> > though was that I'd create a new account for that trip, e.g.
> E:Travel:Fall
> > 2010, and I would enter the transaction in the Checking register using
> that
> > account.  Then I'd have to go into the register for E:Travel:Fall 2010
> and
> > balance out those transactions by adding another transaction that
> subtracts
> > it from the E:Travel:Fall 2010 account and then puts it in the
> appropriate
> > expense account, e.g. E:Auto:Gas.
> >
> > I've tried a couple of test entries, and it appears to do what I want--at
> > initial glance.  However, it seems a little tedious.  Is there a better
> way
> > to do this?  I also tried simply balancing the transaction in a split
> > transaction when I initially enter it.  For example, the split
> transaction
> > in the A:Checking register would have
> >   A:Checking =                     -$10.00,
> >   E:Auto:Gas = $10.00,
> >   E:Travel:Fall 2010 =            -$10.00,
> >   E:Travel:Fall 2010 = $10.00.
> >
> > This eliminates some of the entry error because it's all done at once,
> but
> > it's still a little tedious.  Is there any way to make a template for
> this
> > split transaction, so that I only have to change the amount?
> >
> > How do most people deal with these types of tracking issues?  What are
> the
> > "best practices" for tracking travel expenses?
> >
> > Thanks in advance from a non-accounting person.
> >
> > Al
>
> As long as it is just another categorization for you, you could add a tag
> in the Action field. Then when you want to see those transactions, just
> search for all Actions = to whatever your tag is.
>
> If there is some reimbursement involved, I use a BusinessTravel asset
> account to hold the splits for which I'll be reimbursed. That way I can just
> transfer money from that asset to my checking account when I get reimbursed
> rather than have to find a way to reconcile a bunch of scattered splits with
> offsetting transactions. This plan does interfere with the concept of
> finding out how much money was spent on gas for my car regardless of who
> paid for it (but then I have a separate mileage tracker for gas purchases
> and car maintenance).
>
> By the way, you question seems to fit exactly the discussion on the mailing
> list recently about implementing Categories/Tags (Categories is the term
> Quicken uses to describe the use of additional categorization of
> transactions beyond accounts associated with the cash flow). While it isn't
> implemented in gnucash yet, there seems to be enough interest in it that
> someone might do the programming in the foreseeable future.
>
> Dave
> --
> David Reiser
> dbreiser at earthlink.net
>
>
>
>
>