Wow! I'm impressed and have a question

[Dustin Henning]

On 1/9/2015 7:30 AM, Robert Kesterson wrote:
>
> 1.  Create the initial loan account and checking account.  That will
> create transactions pulling money from "Equity:Opening Balances" into
> the accounts, so that the double entry requirement is satisfied.
>
> 2.  Create an asset account called Allowance. This is where you want the
> money to come from when paying the loan.  Set the opening balance to zero.
>
> 3.  Create a transaction in the checking account for $300, with the
> destination account being the Assets:Allowance account.
>
> 4.  Create a second transaction in the Assets:Allowance account for $300
> with the destination account being the loan account.

For the record, you can actually do the same thing with a split.  The 
split just needs to have for legs, with $300 on both sides of the two 
legs to the same Assets:Allowance account. This will look the same in 
the ledgers, but I don't know about reports.  Also, it might not be 
preferred since one could potentially argue that Assets:Allowance 
started with $0, then transferred $300 to itself, leaving it with $0 
while the $300 from checking still went straight to the loan account. 
Regardless of whether any of that matters, I mention this simply because 
it would make input easier if those potential negative side-effects 
(report problems and stupid arguments) don't apply.

Additionally, while I don't know if this would be correct based on 
standard accounting conventions, another option here might be to make 
two sub accounts under Assets:Allowance.  For instance 
Assets:Allowance:In and Assets:Allowance:Out.  Then you could take $300 
from checking to Assets:Allowance:In and $300 from Assets:Allowance:Out 
to the loan.  These subaccounts would have balances that cancel each 
other out, making Assets:Allowance still show $0, and you could then 
report off of the relevant subaccount in order to see the dollar value 
of only transfers you want to see.  In this scenario, my previous 
discussion about splits would probably still apply in the same way.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 4256 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/attachments/20150109/03e409a9/attachment.p7s>