Sharing payees across accounts

[John Ralls]

On Feb 2, 2014, at 8:36 PM, John R. Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net> wrote:

> On 02/02/2014 07:09 AM, John Ralls wrote:
>> On Feb 2, 2014, at 12:55 AM, John R. Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 02/01/2014 05:50 PM, John Ralls wrote:
>>>> On Feb 1, 2014, at 4:26 PM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> John,
>>>>> 
>>>>> Just a point regarding semantics: you tell the OP that GnuCash doesn't have a "Payee".  However, it seems to me that what GnuCash calls the "Description" is functionally the same as the "Payee." It is presented in GC in the same location that traditional printed checkbook registers place the "Payee"; it is used on printed checks in GC for the "Payee" on the check; and, chapter 6.14 of the Help manual identifies that data element as the "Payee."
>>>>> 
>>>>> Furthermore, most reports include the option of sorting (and subtotalling) on the Description (i.e., "Payee") field. I use this to check the accuracy of my data entry.
>>>> David,
>>>> 
>>>> Sometimes. Other times it’s a payer. Still other times—stock trades come to mind—it’s actually a description. All of which is rather beside the point of the OP’s question and use-case.
>>>> 
>>>> Regards,
>>>> John Ralls
>>>> 
>>> Thanks to whoever decided to bring up the term "payee".  This has been bugging me for a long time.  If a cash account is opened for data entry, the work "Description", more apt for a "general journal" entry, should be changed to "Payee".  Probably not a problem, just a simple if/then statement.
>> I disagree. Sometimes the description contains the payee, sometimes the payer, sometimes neither. For example, consider a brokerage cash account. I usually describe a stock buy as "Buy FOO NNNN", with FOO being the stock symbol and NNNN the number of shares. No payee there: The money isn't going to FOO, it's going (mostly) to some anonymous entity which is selling  A dividend might be "Div FOO", which does indicate the payer but also indicates why they're giving me money.
>> 
>> Of consider a credit card account. True, most of the entries will contain the payee, but credit card company fees will be descriptive ("finance charge", "late fee"), as will the payment transaction.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> John Ralls
>> 
>> 
>> 
> I don't do buy/sell of investments via gnucash or any other general ledger program, but I would assume that yo want a record of the entity that you send the money to (Merril Lynch, etc.).  If you are tracking your broker's activity, an a parallel basic, then I decline to comment, as I have never done that.  I use a spreadsheet for that.  Re: the credit card, that's different.  I pay for a lot of business expenses via credit card.  I have a liability account set up for each credit card.  When I purchase, I credit the card liability account and debit the expense account.  When I pay, I credit cash and debit the cc liability account.  Any fees or interest are treated like a purchase.  The payee, instead of Harry Gas, is Discover. This way I can find all the purchases at Harry's Gas and all charges and payments  paid to Discover.  I use a document field to tell me the statement month/year and abrev for the cc name, e.g."DISC0214".  This way I can see all the activity on a certain statement.  I have an interest expense account when any interest and fees go.  My over inflated ego will not allow me to have a "late fee" account in my chart of accounts.
> 
> I would be putting your stock symbol, etc, in a memo field.

You assume incorrectly because the money is already at the brokerage, in a cash account, but even if it were not, a transfer of in funds to add to that account the broker isn't the "payee". It's still my money, it's just being transferred between two of my accounts. The broker is the "payee" for his commissions, but that's a very small fraction of the total transaction.

In any case, the point is that "description" is more general than "payee"; since there exist use-cases where "payee" is not the appropriate label for the field, the more general label is appropriate.

Regards,
John Ralls