Splitting transactions

[prl]

What Graham suggests would be good for a business user of GnuCash. I 
don't use Gnucash for business, so I have something simpler. I have a 
Scheduled Transaction (SX) set up for my gas and electricity accounts 
set for the day the account (with a suitable warning) is paid by direct 
debit.

I have accounts like Graham's 1. and 2. for the expenses, and the SX is 
a split as:
Asset:My main transaction account - Debit total gas & electricity 
invoice amounts
Expense:Utility:Gas - Credit gas invoice amount
Expense:Utility:Electricity - Credit electricity invoice amount

When I receive the invoices, I enter the values from the invoices into 
the value fields in the SX. I'm billed quarterly, so this isn't onerous.

This models the transactions I see directly. I get separate invoices for 
gas and electricity, but only a single debit for the sum of them shows 
up in my bank account.

I do similar things (but usually without splits) for other 
regular-in-interval, but differing-in-date, bills like water & sewerage 
and phone & internet. For direct debits, I need do nothing more than 
what I do for gas and electricity.

When I reconcile my credit card accounts, the reconciliation ends with 
the opportunity to enter a transaction. Before I enter the transaction, 
I set up an advance payment with the bank date the transaction for that 
date and enter it. Then I enter the transaction number from the bank in 
the Notes field of the Gnucash transaction for reference (I can 
cut-and-paste it from the bank's Web interface)..

For manual payments it's the same, except that there's no popup from 
reconciliation to enter the transaction, so it's put in as a normal 
transaction (most of these are annual payments, so don't require a great 
deal of effort).

My bank has no facility (as far as I know) to allow me to make payments 
from my bank accounts from Gnucash. If you have that facility, you may 
do things differently.

As Graham says, there are lots of ways of doing this and someone else's 
method may not suit you best.

Peter

On 11/01/13 14:35, Graham Stoddart-Stones wrote:
> Niranjan:
>
>
> Here is one suggestion:
>
>
> 1. Set up Expense:Utility:Gas
> 2. Set up Expense:Utility:Electric
> 3. Set up Liability:Accounts Payable:xxxx (name of your service provider)
> 4. Set up a Vendor Account for your service provider
>
>
> When you receive an invoice from your service provider, enter it via Business, Vendor, New Bill, and enter the invoice as two lines - one for the Gas, and one for the Electric, applied to the relevant Expense Accounts. When you Post the Bill, allocate it to the Liability: Accounts Payable for your service provider.
>
>
> You will then be able to see at any time what you have paid for Gas, what you have paid for Electricity, and what is paid/due to your service provider.
>
>
> There are other ways of setting this up, please note that this is just one option. In particular, setting up your Accounts Payable is a matter of choice: the reports will only run on the top-level Accounts Payable, so if you set it up as I have suggested, that report does not run properly (e.g. you will not get an Ageing report on your Payables), but you will be able to see at a glance what your Liability is to each vendor. It is a matter of choice, which may depend upon how many accounts you are running, and how big the whole system is - ie just household, or an entire business
>
>
> Hope this makes sense
>
>
> Graham
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: "Niranjan Rao" <nhrdls at gmail.com>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Sent: Friday, 11 January, 2013 3:06:26 AM
> Subject: Splitting transactions
>
> Hi there,
>
> I am a brand new user of gnucash - have been using it for may be two days.
> To put things in perspective I have almost next to nothing knowledge of
> accounting. But I did went through the manual on the site. Still trying to
> set the all the accounts.
>
> I have one provider that provides both gas and electric. I want to track
> individual spending on gas and electric as well as how much I pay to
> provider. In other words, I want to know my total bill for the month was
> xxx, but still want to split the bill in individual parts. I am trying to
> assign gas/electric portions to appropriate accounts. What is the best way
> to see my total bill to my service provider?
>
> By the way, is it possible to open the document in complete window without
> frame. It's big and reading it in existing frame makes it difficult. I know
> I can open it in different tab etc, but still....
>
> Thanks,
>
> Niranjan
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