Wife´s credit card (in the same statement)

[Derek Atkins]

Fábio Santos de Lima <fabiolimace at gmail.com> writes:

> In my accounts book I have an expenses account called Wife (Expenses:Wife)
> for transactions on which I give her some money. But In your example with
> additional credit card I'd do this:
>
> To register HER expenses:
> D Accounts Receivable
> C Credit Card
>
> To register HER payment:
> D Credit Card
> C Accounts Receivable

Is she paying the card directly?  Or is she giving you the money to pay
for her expenses on the card?  Moreover, this doesn't take into
consideration when she pays for your expenses (or when she pays a joint
expense).

> In by huble opinion I think that the business features can be used for
> human. I use them to track my bills, including my credit card statlements. I
> don't know if it is correct for accounting professionals.

My point here is that the A/Receivable and A/Payable account types in
GnuCash were specifically designed to be used by the business features.
In particular they were designed for using the Invoice/Bill and Process
Payment interfaces.  If you try to hand-enter transactions into an A/R
or A/P register you:

a) cannot set all the fields,
b) cannot assign appropriate metadata for any biz reports to work
(e.g. aging report)
c) can possibly lock the transaction in a way that you will not longer
be able to edit it.

So I reiterate my statement:  You SHOULD NOT use A/R or A/P type
accounts for manually entered transactions.  You can just use a regular
Asset or Liability account instead.

> I'm also from Brazil. I've considered a lot about giving my wife an
> additional card, thou I still think that it's not a good idea for my case...
> I prefer giving her a fixed amount of money monthly. That is wy I consider
> the money I give her as an expense. Is that correct?
>
> I'd appreciate more opinions.

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-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