Assets with a negative value treated as zero in reports

[Colin Bell]

On 15/05/2013 19:59, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Colin Bell <crb11 at cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
>> When I do an Account Summary report, any asset I have with a negative
>> value (such as an overdrawn bank account) is treated as having zero
>> value. This seems to apply to all the Asset and Liability reports.
>>
>> I assume this behaviour is by design, although it seems broken to me.
>>
>> Is there an option to turn this off and get a correct balance sheet
>> for my accounts?
>
> What does it mean to have a "Negative Asset"?  How can you have negative
> cash in your wallet?  How could you have negative money in your checking
> account?  And no, "overdraft" doesn't count, because that's yet another
> account that would be a Liability that gets tied to your checking
> account.
>
> If the asset account is negative then you should think about how to
> record it as a Liability.

I assume this means the answer to my question is "no".

What I have is categories in my accounts which can either be an asset or 
a liability at different times. Buddha Buck gives a good example, an 
overdrawn bank account is another. A third one is that I lend my car to 
a work colleague, and want to record how much money she owes me 
currently. Most of the time this is positive, but sometimes negative (if 
she has filled up with petrol currently).

I _could_ create duplicate Asset and Liability accounts to cover all 
these cases, and would have to if I was accounting to professional 
standards I assume, but for the purpose of my household accounts this is 
overkill and risks mistakes.

Gnucash in any case works perfectly happily with negative assets except 
when you want to generate reports. I've been using it happily for years 
- but now I'm getting married and combining accounts with my fiancee, I 
need to start printing off reports for her, which I haven't done before.

If we weren't meant to have negative assets, the program should prevent 
me from letting an Asset account go negative (or at least warn me!) and 
the documentation should make it clearer as well.

Thanks,

Colin