recording reimbursable expenses and split rent expenses

Michael Hendry hendry.michael at gmail.com
Sun Feb 15 04:06:01 EST 2015


> On 14 Feb 2015, at 22:06, Jonathan Diamond <samuel.diamond at me.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello, I am new to gnucash and I am just getting the hang of it. I have two separate questions that I hope you can answer for me. 
> 
> 1. I work for a company and often incur expenses such as meals or office supplies for example that will be reimbursed to me at the end of the month. I am having trouble determining how to record these reimbursable expenses in gnucash as well as the reimbursement itself. 
> 
> 	a) Are the reimbursable expenses recorded as expenses that accrue in an account called “business expenses” for example? And then when I receive a cheque from my company at the end of the month for these expenses, I simply take money from the “business expense” expense account and transfer it back to my checking account for the amount of the reimbursed cheque? This seems okay, but it doesn’t account for the cheque from my company deposited into my checking account.
> 
> 	b) Similar to a) but set up an asset account called “monies owed” for example because the reimbursable expenses I incur are technically monies i’m entitled to and therefore could be considered an asset. 


First the disclaimer - I’m not an accountant, just an amateur bookkeeper.

I would treat these expenses by posting them to a new account called (for example) "Assets:Reimbursable Expenses”. When the reimbursement cheque arrives, the balance in the account will drop to zero.

I use this method to follow Pet Insurance claims. I pay the vet up front and reclaim the costs periodically, taking account of the excess payable once per year for each medical condition.

> 
> 2. My roommate pays for half my monthly rent. He transfers money to me before I pay rent and then I pay the total of the rent. I want to keep track of my rent expense but the money I receive from my roommate isn’t income nor is the total I pay indicative of my total expense, it’s simply money that flows through my account to my landlord. How do I account for this accurately? 

This is the converse of the above. Create a Liability Account called (e.g.) Liability:Fred’s Rent. When Fred gives you his rent money you increase the Liability, when you pay the rent half the money comes from Liability:Fred’s Rent and the other half from your own Expenses:Rent account.

I think you’d probably worked this out yourself…

Michael

> 
> Thank you kindly for any help you can provide me.
> 
> Kind regards, 
> Jonathan 
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