Different dates in Expense Voucher

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Jonas Lippuner <jonas at lippuner.ca> writes:

> Hi Michael,
>
> Thank you for your suggestion. I was thinking about doing something
> like that if there is not a more elegant way to do it in GnuCash. The
> reason why I would like to use Expense Vouchers, if possible, is that
> they provide a nice way to collect receipts from a single employee for
> a later payment. For example, I can have an open Expense Voucher for
> an employee and add new entries for new receipts that I receive and
> then later make a single payment that covers expenses for some time
> period.
>
> Having an open Voucher would be a good aid in keeping track of
> expenses that have not be reimbursed yet. This could also be achieved
> with having a separate liability account for each employee, as you
> point out.
>
> However, expense vouchers also have the benefit of logically
> connecting an expense to a registered employee in GnuCash. This could
> also be achieved with a separate liability account, but then I would
> have to open an expense voucher for each receipt, which would make it
> harder to keep track of un-reimbursed expenses.
>
> For the above reasons I was hoping that there would be (or will be) a
> functionality to automatically create a separate transaction for each
> entry in an expense voucher, bill, invoice etc.
>
> Thanks again for your quick response.

In short, no, there is no way to create multiple transactions from a
single voucher, and no, there wont be in the future either.

An Expense Voucher (also a Vendor Bill, and a Customer Invoice) is
effectively a way to record multiple metadata for a SINGLE TRANSACTION.
If you want to record multiple transactions (which is what you need if
you want multiple dates) then you need multiple Expense Vouchers.  But
that makes sense; if you have expenses in multiple periods you should
have multiple vouchers, per period.

Note that you can pay multiple vouchers to the same employee with a
single payment, so it's only a question of recording the actual
expenses.

-derek

> Best,
> Jonas
>
>
> -------- Original Message  --------
> Subject: Re: Different dates in Expense Voucher
> From: Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com>
> To: Jonas Lippuner <jonas at lippuner.ca>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Date: Tue 11 Jun 2013 10:54:26 AM PDT
>
>> On 11 Jun 2013, at 18:18, Jonas Lippuner <jonas at lippuner.ca>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear all,
>> 
>> I sometimes get receipts from employees for reimbursement of money 
>> they spent months ago. As an example, let's say an employee gives
>> me two receipts in June for money they spent in April and May. I
>> would then create an new expense voucher and in the entries list
>> the two items with the appropriate date when the money was spent
>> (i.e. the date of the receipt). Then I post the voucher and process
>> a payment, which will be a single check that the employee gets for
>> the two expenses.
>> 
>>> I am not an accountant, but I reckon what you need to do is think
>>> of this in two stages:
>> 
>>> 1. Employee E spends some money (perhaps on several occasions) on
>>> behalf of the company, which is then in his debt.
>> 
>>> 2. At some later date the company repays this debt.
>> 
>>> You need to set up a new account, a Current Liability, called
>>> something that means "Stuff bought by E", and post the details
>>> from the receipts. The dates you enter for these transactions are
>>> the dates on the receipts, and the transactions are between the
>>> relevant expense accounts (e.g. Fuel, or Stationery) and the
>>> "Stuff bought by E" account.
>> 
>>> Once you've repaid E, you record the expenditure through your
>>> checking account's register, but recorded against "Stuff bought
>>> by E", not the individual expense accounts. which have already
>>> been debited.
>> 
>>> This way, you can accumulate records of numerous separate items
>>> of expenditure and associate them with the correct dates, and
>>> deal with the reimbursement when it arises - it could even be
>>> after the end of the financial year.
>> 
>>> You might want to have separate accounts for different employees,
>>> but this is probably not necessary.
>> 
>>> Michael
>> 
>> 
>> The problem is now that the two entries show up in the expense
>> account with the post date of the voucher rather than the date of
>> the entry (i.e. the date of the receipt). This is a problem because
>> I would like to have the date in the expense account be the date
>> when the money was actually spent. Because for this specific
>> project, we have a budget entry every month, but if I only get the
>> receipts later I still want the expense to show up in the month
>> when it was actually incurred. Otherwise that account will be under
>> budget for a few months and then over budget later.
>> 
>> I tried unchecking the option "accumulate splits" when posting the 
>> voucher, but that still creates a single transaction (albeit with 
>> multiple splits now) with a single date (the post date) and so the 
>> receipt dates get lost again. The desired functionality would be
>> that GnuCash creates a different transaction for each entry in the
>> voucher, so that the different dates are preserved.
>> 
>> Is it possible to do this in GnuCash? If not, what would be the
>> best way to handle this situation? Note that it also applies to
>> invoices (a customer pays several things on the same invoice that
>> have different income dates) and bills.
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks for the help, Jonas
>> 
>> 
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>> 

-- 
       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