Decreases in Expenses?

[John Edwards]

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 3:29 AM, Jhonnatan Perkins <jhonperkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> So far I was doing something wrong and that was using an Expenses Account as
> a "placeholder" for "penny adjusment", you know, when you shop for groceries
> and they say the bill is 10.99 but they charge you 11. If viceversa (you are
> the one who wins), then I was using the same Expenses Account, but now I
> think I should move those transactions to some Income:Bonus:Penny_Adjustment account.

It seems to me that if the groceries actually cost you 11, then you
should record 11 under Expenses:Groceries.

That said, if you do want to keep track of penny adjustments as you
described (or cash balance adjustments in general), you would want to
do it in one account.

In a business setting, it's usually called "Cash Over and Short" or
something similar, and can be either an income or an expense,
depending on whether it has a credit (income) or debit (expense)
balance. Normally it's an expense, because you end up short more often
than you're over.

In GnuCash, since you have to choose an account type, I would call
your Adjustment account an expense. If it turns out to be negative at
some point, then it's not the end of the world. It also works as a
negative expense, because it has served to reduce the amount you
actually spent on your expenses.

John

-- 
John Edwards
"You can insure against the weather, but you can't insure against
incompetence, can you?" - Phil Tufnell