Reimbursable Expenses as a Volunteer

[Mike or Penny Novack]

Barry Rosenberg wrote:

>>From: Derek Atkins <warlord at MIT.EDU>
>>
>>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.
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>Hi Derek,
>
>I've been using Accounts Receivable for the purpose that Sandeep described
>for a while. I'm a consultant with need to track expense reimbursements. I
>also use subaccounts of A/R to track various other money due to me (small
>bits of cash lent to friends, roommate expenses, etc.)
>
>I'm just curious what can go wrong with this setup. I am not using any of
>the Business functions with no plans to start in the immediate future.
>  
>
We maybe should be distinguishing between "accounts receivable" in the 
pure accounting sense and "accounts receivable" as a built in facility 
of gnucash. The "don't do it" refers to using the built in facility 
which you mustn't mix with manual processing. But if you are in a 
non-business setting or a business setting but not using the built in 
business facilities and you are entering the transactions manually you 
can still have an account that is LOGICALLY receivables safely enough. 
In other words, you create an account of type "asset" and give it a 
suitable name indicating it is your receivables. You won't, of course, 
have the various receivables reports available to you, but that 
shouldn't be a problem with this sort of  informal tracking of 
receivables (where you just want to be able to tell if there is anything 
pending collection in any of the sub accounts).

If I were doing this maybe I'd use a name like "AMOUNTS  receivable"  
(to avoid confusion with the built in  accounts).

Michael D Novack