Simple question

[Ian Konen]

I think the tutorial has a good example of how you would account for
purchasing a house with a mortgage as well as a "loan to a friend" you
might want to look at just to see the accounts and splits involved.  In
your case, though, you don't need to worry about the "purchase" transition
that creates the loan's opening balance (and the asset's).  Like other
accounts, you'll just have to start the loan from Equity:opening balances
at its balance on the date you are starting your bookkeeping.  You don't
need the "matching asset" to account for a loan that you are still paying
off.  A typical payment will be a split transaction with the total payment
coming from a checking account, the "principal portion" goes towards the
liability:loan and the "interest portion" goes to an expense:interest
account.  If you DID have an asset that you had purchased with the loan
(like a house you bought with a mortgage) that would be it's own account
going forward and would typically not be part of most transactions except
the initial purchase and a possible later resale.


On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 3:52 AM, Ben Walton <benwalton08 at me.com> wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I'm very new to accounting principles and using gnu cash to manage
> personal finances. Great sw and I'm learning :-) one question which I'm
> sure is easy. If I have bank loans that were taken out a while ago for
> various reasons but not resulting in an asset I can easily match to, how do
> I handle the ongoing monthly payments?
>
> Thx in advance Ben
>
> Sent from my iPhone
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-- 
Ian Konen
iankonen at gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/iankonen
978-821-6498