Accounting treatment for travel reimbursements

[Edward Doolittle]

I've been using gnucash for years ... such a great, useful application.
I've been able to figure out the answers to most of my questions, with the
help of help documents, mailing list archives, and the published book, but
I still have a couple of questions. They're really about accounting topics,
not gnucash per se, but everyone on this list is so helpful I thought I
would ask.

One question I have is about the proper accounting treatment for travel
reimbursements from my employer. For example, suppose I take my personal
vehicle on an overnight trip for work. I pay for a hotel room, meals, and
fuel using my credit card. When I return, I fill out a travel form and I am
reimbursed according to the following scheme:

- Full cost of hotel room (up to a reasonable maximum; let's say $150 for
one night in a given example)
- "per diem" rates for meals (something like $8 for breakfast, $12 for
lunch, and $20 for dinner) regardless of the amount actually spent (unless
a meal or meals have been covered by another organization, in which case I
get $0 for that meal, of course)
- "per km" rates for travel (something like $0.40/km)

The treatment for the hotel room seems clear. I have an "accounts
receivable" account in my asset tree, so when I pay the hotel,
 dr. accounts receivable $150
 cr. credit card $150
When I receive the reimbursement a few days/weeks later,
 dr. chequing account $150
 cr. accounts receivable $150

Less clear is the treatment for meals. What I'm doing now when I pay $25
for dinner, say, is
 dr. expenses:food:dining $25
 cr. credit card $25
When I receive my reimbursement,
 dr. chequing account $20
 cr. income:non-taxable:travel reimbursement $20

One of the issues with my treatment of meal reimbursement is that there is
no account in common to the two transactions for meals, unlike accounts
receivable for the two transactions for the hotel room. I suppose I could
take a "rebate" from expenses:food:dining instead of treating it as
non-taxable income. Would that be better? Should I treat the situation
differently if I paid less for the meal than what I received in
reimbursement? It would seem strange to be rebated more than the cost of
the meal.

For mileage, the situation is even less clear. Only a fraction of the $0.40
is needed to offset fuel expenses (say $0.10/km for fuel). The rest, in
theory, could be used to cover part of the cost of tire wear/oil
changes/other regular maintenance, and part could be used to offset vehicle
depreciation, I suppose. However, I don't plan to book depreciation for the
vehicle until I sell it (that's my understanding of the "cost principle"
... there is no tax reason for me to book depreciation regularly, if I
understand correctly). So setting the proportion of the $0.40/km to go to
maintenance vs. depreciation seems to involve an arbitrary factor and to be
unnecessarily complicated. On the other hand, the way I'm treating mileage
now is pretty much the same as the way I'm treating meals, and has the same
drawback.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

-- 
Edward Doolittle
Associate Professor of Mathematics
First Nations University of Canada
1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2

« Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent mécontents
et un ingrat. »
-- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI