Any caveats to creating monthly Expense Accounts?

Derek Atkins warlord at MIT.EDU
Wed Apr 30 09:35:53 EDT 2014


Hi,

samalex <samalex at gmail.com> writes:

> 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.  

This is WAY complicated.  Just set up your Expenses:Groceries and put
all your groceries in there.  If you want to see how much you spent then
use a P&L or Transaction Report.  The transaction report can (IIRC) be
set up to group by month to give you this information, and then it wont
clutter up your Chart of Accounts.

> Thanks for any advice --
> Sam

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-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available


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