A way of managing a joint account

Mark Hanford mark at hanfordonline.co.uk
Mon Sep 2 09:41:09 EDT 2013


Greetings, all. I have recently started using GnuCash for my personal
accounts, and think I have everything mostly ticking over nicely. I do have
one area though that's stopping me from ditching my spreadsheet-based
approach at the moment, and that is to do with handling a joint Credit Card
I have with my partner.

Due to the perks of the account, we use the CC for all our joint
expenditures (groceries, furniture, whatever) but also for various
'personal' things to increase the cash-back.

On my spreadsheet I simply list all the transactions and put a code next to
each line for either MH (me), LT (partner) or J (joint). I can then simply
SUMIF all the transactions for the three codes, giving me the amounts we
have to pay each month. I pay (MH+(0.5*J)) and Lou pays (LT+(0.5*J))

Reconciliation is simple, as the transaction match the statements, and I
can still get spending breakdowns by payee.

I can't work out how to reproduce this in GC though. I've tried having a
sort of placeholder account for "Credit Card", and below that three
accounts for MH, LT and J. I then import the statement into "Credit Card"
and go through and charge all the entries to one of those sub-accounts.

Trouble with this is that I lose the 'categorisation' I get from my normal
accounts where I can charge things to Expenses:Groceries or Ex:Hobbies or
whatever.

If we ONLY used the account for shared stuff it would be easier, we'd just
pay (0.5 * balance) each.


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