recording reimbursable expenses and split rent expenses

Mike or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Sun Feb 15 10:56:53 EST 2015


On 2/14/2015 5:06 PM, Jonathan Diamond 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.
Let's take the first question first.

"B" is correct. Just because these amounts are an expense for your 
employer doesn't mean that they are expenses for you, nor the 
reimbursement income. You are in effect LENDING your employer money (to 
cover these business expenses) and later this debt is paid when your 
employer sends you reimbursement. So ........

You pay a work related amount. That is a debit to an ASSET account "owed 
to me by employer" and a credit to your cash, checking, or credit card 
(I don't know how you paid the amount).

You receive a reimbursement. That is a debit to your checking account (I 
assume your employer did this by check) and a credit to "owed to me by 
employer".

In other words, both transactions are transfers between different types 
of asset accounts (OK, possibly a liability account if your credit card 
was involved). And BTW, this was not a "gnucash question" <<you would be 
asking the exact same question if you were still using pen and ink on 
paper>> So take my answer with the grain of salt it deserves because I 
am NOT a chartered accountant. We aren't properly qualified to be 
telling you how to do basic bookkeeping. Gnucash automates the process, 
but you still need to sit down and learn the basics that you would need 
for ANY method of double entry bookkeeping.

Michael D Novack



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