Any caveats to creating monthly Expense Accounts?

[John G Sullivan]

seems to me that you are better using reports to organize by year, month, etc.  That would give you a more flexibility. Your proposed accounts would needed to be updated/created constantly.

John Sullivan


On Apr 29, 2014, at 7:02 PM, samalex <samalex at gmail.com> wrote:

> For items I pay once a month like Mortgage, Cable, auto loans, etc I have
> normal Expense accounts they go into, but does anyone know if potential
> issues with me creating a new Monthly Expense column for like Groceries,
> Dining, etc where I have multiple items per month?  This way instead of
> having one bucket for everything I'll have monthly buckets I can organize
> into years and months over time.  
> 
> Example it might be like this:
> Expense - Household - Mortgage
> Expense - Household - Cable
> Expense - Auto - Loan
> Expense - Auto - Insurance
> Expense - 2014 - 01 - Groceries
> Expense - 2014 - 01 - Dining
> Expense - 2014 - 01 - Auto Fuel
> Expense - 2014 - 01 - Entertainment
> Expense - 2014 - 02 - Groceries
> Expense - 2014 - 02 - Dining
> Expense - 2014 - 02 - Auto Fuel
> Expense - 2014 - 02 - Entertainment
> ... etc.
> 
> This would great a large number of expense accounts over time, but it'd give
> a simple way to tell how much is in each expense bucket.  Also we get paid
> not on the 1st of the month, generally a few days to a week before the first
> so I generally try to mark any expenses after we get paid as the upcoming
> month.  Example, if I got paid on 3/27 I'd say everything after this would
> be an April expense.  So I can't simply go by date if everything is in one
> Expense account.
> 
> Anyway, I'm just toying around with this, and I wasn't sure if others had
> tried it or if there are any fundamental issues that anyone sees.  
> 
> Thanks for any advice --
> Sam
> 
> 
> 
> 
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