One transaction from two accounts to one

[Michael Hendry]

On 8 May 2013, at 23:15, Alois Mahdal <Alois.Mahdal.1-ndmail at zxcvb.cz> wrote:

> 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

But I don't think you consult GC when you make spending decisions in the canteen (you say below that your "typical session is from a set of notes").
 
> 
> 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.

Agreed, but you might also say you'd spent 25 CZK from your wallet - you have to take care with data entry.

What happens if (when?) the value of the voucher is increased to 85 CZK - you would have to deal with a transitional period when you have both 80 and 85 CZK vouchers to deal with.

> 
> It's basically intuition.  

Not a dependable source of advice, in my experience!

> 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 ;)).

Once you've established a method, it doesn't really matter, what I was trying to illustrate was an easier way of visualising a split transaction.

(Actually, I think the term "split transaction" is misleading, as what we're dealing with is merging of two or more transactions into one - it's easier to get your head around this merging process if you look at the Food account, which is common to both Cash and Voucher transactions).

> 
> 
> 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

Michael Hendry