One transaction from two accounts to one

[Alois Mahdal]

Hi,

On Wed, 8 May 2013 22:40:12 +0100
Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I think Al is making things difficult for himself

Oh how many times I've heard this in my life... :D


> Why not treat the vouchers as current assets, adding the face
> value of newly received vouchers to the asset account as they
> come in, and spending them (at face value) as their exchanged
> for food? The only reason I can think of for treating them as
> securities would be if they change their value after they've
> been received.

The reason I want to use them separately is that I want to have
the records as close as to how I think about them.  Once the
money is converted to voucher, it's not like cash to me
anymore:

*   you can spend them for food only

*   you don't get change back for them or only up to, say, 10

    this has great influence on psychology of spending: when you
    don't have much cash at hand, you tend to pick things close 
    to 80, even if it means that you'd have one more small cola
    or a chocolate bar that you could live happily without ;)

*   they may not be accepted everywhere

*   part of them is funded by your employee

*   if the face price is 80, there's no such thing as spending
    20 on that account

While I could use the easier approach and simply use different
account, above features make me feel that it would make more
sense to say "I spent 2 vouchers and 23CZK" than "I spent 160
from my 80-voucher envelope and 23 CZK from my real wallet".

Also, one day you'll say 150 and GnuCash won't care.

It's basically intuition.  Accounting person could probably see
it different.


> Although it's usual to enter a transaction through the
> register for the source of the cash, in this instance it's
> easier to see what's going on if you use the expense account
> ("Food") as the primary account, and collect the cash from
> the other two.

Good point.  However, I'll probably keep using cash account for
convenience: my typical session is that from set of notes I've
made in past few days, I want to create a set of transaction
records.  90% of the notes are cash-only, but different kinds
of expenses (including beer ;)).


Thank you guys!

aL.

PS: OT: It seems that on this list people tend to reply to OP
and CC the list rather than just reply to the list.  I find this
rather problematic since I use separate account for lists that
I don't check inbox at: Simply because it's always full of spam.

So sorry if I seem to reply late

-- 
Alois Mahdal