how to represent utilities that can have a negative balance?

[prl]

I'd set it up like a credit card. Phone company charges are charged to 
it from your Expenses:Utilities:Phone:Mobile account (or wherever), and 
then your payments go from your Assets:Savings (or wherever) when you 
pay into it. It goes into credit sometimes, but then I can pre-load 
credit onto my credit cards, too.

And I'd just set up a negative equity entry (value on the Decrease side 
in the Equity account) to represent the debt that the account originally 
had. That's exactly what I did with a credit card that had an initial 
charge against it when I started using Gnucash. My Equity:Opening 
Balances account has both Increase and Decrease entries, and so its 
balance represents the net equity that I had at the time - my total 
savings less my total debts.

Not an accountant.

Peter

On 11/09/13 17:48, Drew Heath wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm having trouble searching the archives so please forgive me for an easy
> question:
>
> My mobile phone provider uses a pay-as-you-go model and will tolerate a
> negative balance for up to 8 weeks.
>
> My typical usage pattern for this account is to go several hundred below
> zero (thereby owing them money) during a month's usage, then recharge the
> account with a bank transfer several hundred above zero (stockpiling a bit
> of credit against future usage).
>
> I'm not sure how to handle such an account in GnuCash.
>
> I started GnuCash on September 1st and used Equity for all my opening
> balances, but this account began with a negative 200 balance.
>
> Should I also create an opening liability account for this expense?
>
> How do I handle monthly usage bills and recharge payments?
>
> Thank you for any help you can provide,
>
> - Drew
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