Reimbursable Expenses as a Volunteer

[Derek Atkins]

Hi,

Sandeep Mukherjee <mukherjee.sandeep at gmail.com> writes:

> Reimbursable expenses are not really expenses, since in the long run
> you don't really pay for them. They are actually a special kind Assets
> known as "Accounts Receivable" or "A/R". So find that account in your
> GnuCash file, or create one if it doesn't exist. Then you can do
> something like this when you pay for food, say with your bank card:

Just to be clear here, unless you are using the Business functions you
SHOULD NOT use an account of type A/R and A/P.  Those account types are
not meant for user input and you are likely to shoot yourself in the
foot if you choose to use that.

Instead, just use an account of type "Asset".  You can still *name* the
account "A/R" if you wish.  Just *never* use the A/Receivable or
A/Payable account types for manual transactions.  Never.

> Food expense to be reimbursed:
>     DEBIT   $5.00   Assets:A/R
>     CREDIT $5.00   Assets:BANK-ACCT
>
> Later when you receive the reimbursement, you can enter:
>
> Food reimbursement received:
>     DEBIT   $5.00   Assets:BANK-ACCT
>     CREDIT $5.00   Assets:A/R
>
> At the end of the accounting period, check the balance in the A/R
> account. If non-zero, someone owes you money!
>
> Hope this helps,
> Sandeep

-derek

>> Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2014 21:44:36 +0000
>> From: Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com>
>> To: daniels <danielrsilva8 at gmail.com>
>> Cc: "gnucash-user at gnucash.org" <gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
>> Subject: Re: Reimbursable Expenses as a Volunteer
>> Message-ID:
>>         <CAL=0gLsfnjhyQ4oSSPNTb_Pna838xq3i-=VW0=9FTjgcLOC16g at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>>
>> On 4 January 2014 11:44, daniels <danielrsilva8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have searched the mailing list archives and Google for a case similar to
>>> mine, but it seems that must people that ask this questions are either
>>> consultants or self-employed and are going to get the reimbursement from
>>> their clients, so I wanted to make sure that I was doing the right thing in
>>> my situation.
>>>
>>> I work as a volunteer and get reimbursed expenses from the food that I buy
>>> during the week. In most cases I have seen, people setup an assets account
>>> called "reimbursable expenses" and credit it with x, while taking x from
>>> their cash account for example. Is that the best practice? What if I wanted
>>> to know that that expense was actually food, so that I still wanted to track
>>> how much I spent on any given week on food, even though it wasn`t me that
>>> was actually going to pay it at the end of the day
>>
>> You could use sub accounts of the reimbursable account for food, fuel, etc.
>>
>> Colin
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-- 
       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