question

[Dorel Ciornei]

Some accounting software (for ex QB) allow to create a "Class".As such I had used Expense accounts to record Gas, Maintenance, Insurance, etc, but assign each transaction to the corresponding "class", for ex: Altima, Escort, Passat, etc. Then you could easily run a report for the specific class of interest and see all the transactions for that car only.
Can GNU Cash use such "Classes"? I briefly looked but I didn't see any way to assign any transaction to a special group.Have I missed that functionality?
As far as where the transactions are recorded, in my humble opinion:
Cars are assets whether used in business or not, therefore one should track their value in an asset account:
Assets: ->
-> Subaru
-> Ford, etc
What you spend for the cars you track as an expense (some deductible if used for business, some not):Expenses: ->
-> Gas-> Maintenance-> Registration
-> Insurance: -> Auto Insurance (I have also sub-accounts for Home insurance, Health Insurance, etc)

If you have a loan for that car, you track it in Liabilities:Liability:
 -> Loans: -> Subaru 2014 Loan 

That is how I do it.But it would be nice to have "classes" in order to track easier the expenses.
You assign each car to a class, then no need for a gazillion sub-accounts.


 


     On Tuesday, July 7, 2015 10:52 PM, Michael Ferrara <mferrara1 at gmail.com> wrote:
   

 I have wondered about this too. We have Joshua's schema which includes
Vehicles of subaccounts of major expense categories. Then there is Dave's
schema which includes categories as subaccounts of vehicle expenses.

I am not a database expert, but the two schemes appear to be "inverses" of
each other, correct?

Would it be possible to add a "layer" of asset/liability accounts for the
redundant subaccounts? You could then (I think) run a cash-flow report. For
example:

(Liabilities)
-Subaru
-Ford
-Toyota

(Expenses)
-Maintenance
-Fuel
-Legal
    --Insurance
    --Registration

I list the vehicles as liabilities (credit accounts) because they normally
balance expenses (debit accounts.) (I suppose if the vehicles are used for
business to generate a profit they could be listed as assets instead.)

Does that make sense? Has anyone tried this? (Any RDBM's out there?)

Mike
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