How to file expense sheets I send to my employer

[Geert Janssens]

On Saturday 22 March 2014 09:49:52 allamistakeo18 at mac.com wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have been trying various ways to achieve the following, but none has
> been satisfactory, so I am now posting this request for suggestions.
> 
> I am an employee. Occasionally I have expenses that I can claim
> reimbursement for from my employer. Sometimes these expenses are made
> in a different currency from the one my employer uses to reimburse
> me, and in that case the conversion rate is imposed to me by the
> internal website I am required to use to file my expenses. Most of
> the time, an expense sheet also includes a night-out allowance, which
> does not correspond to any expense I made, but to an additional
> salary I can claim for having had to travel.
> 
> How do I properly file such an expense claim in GnuCash?
> 
> I have tried various things; the best I could find so far is still the
> following, overly complicated and unsatisfactory hack. - I have a
> Receivable account for my employer in the currency that I get
> reimbursed in. - Under this Receivable account, I have sub-accounts,
> one per currency that I made reimbursable expenses in. To achieve
> what I wanted I had to make these sub-accounts Asset accounts.
> 
> Then my current process is the following:
> 1) I book each expense against the Asset sub-account corresponding to
> the currency I used in my expense. 2) I book night-out allowances in
> an income account against the corresponding sub-account. 3) I create
> an invoice. The income account against which is expense is written is
> irrelevant, because I never post the invoice. Each expense is written
> in the currency of the reimbursement. 4) For each expense, I make a
> transfer between the sub-accounts using the expense rate imposed by
> my employer to gather all expenses on the sub-account with the
> currency corresponding of reimbursement. 5) I make a single transfer
> from that sub-account to the top-level Receivable account. 5) When I
> finally get reimbursed, I pay the invoice to my Bank account against
> the top-level Receivable account.
> 
That approach looks needlessly complicated to me. And never posting invoices, yet paying them 
is a misuse of the business features. I'd expect unwanted side effect from this.

> This process is overly complicated. I have thought about it, and what
> I think would make most sense (but I don’t know how to achieve this)
> is the following: 1) I book my expenses against Expense accounts in
> the corresponding currencies. 2) I create an “expense sheet” (what
> would be the equivalent of this in GnuCash?) in which I write each
> expense in the currency of reimbursement, against the Expense account
> in which I booked the expense, specifying the expense rate imposed by
> my employer. 3) I post the expense sheet against a single Receivable
> account for my employer, hereby exactly compensating my expenses in
> my Expense accounts. 4) When I actually get reimbursed, I transfer
> the money from the Receivable account to my Bank account.
> 
> Thanks in advance for your suggestions,
> 
Why do you want to book the expenses twice ? Once directly to expense accounts in the original 
currency and one on the expense voucher (that's what they are called in gnucash) your create ?

Instead I would
1. create an expense voucher and add each expense against Expense Account in their 
corresponding currencies (you may have to enter the amount  in your employer's imposed 
currency though, I'm not sure)
2. Post the expense voucher. This should ask you for conversion rates for each expense not in 
the post account's currency
3. Pay the voucher once you get actually reimbursed as you explain.

Is this not working for you ?

Geert