Re: Find Transaction Result – Can’t change View

[Michael Hendry]

> On 18 Mar 2015, at 21:39, farmerjohn <rich.lipscomb at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I'll note that purchases made for which you expect to be reimbursed are
>> technically NOT expenses to you (and the reimbursement technically isn't
>> income). 
> 
>> You'd be better served by putting these transactions into something like
>> Assets:Reimbursibles and then when you get reimbursed you move that
>> value from A:Reimbursibles to your Cash or Bank account.
> 
>> What I do is mark my Reimbursibles as cleared when I file for
>> reimbursement, and then I reconcile those transactions when the
>> reimbursement happens. 
> 
> I implemented your suggestion.  I made a placeholder account:
> Assets:Reimbursables, then made subaccounts for several different places
> where we pay out of pocket and then are reimbursed. 
> 

As I indicated in an earlier contribution, I would regard reimbursable items of this sort as Current Assets for Balance Sheet purposes - a bit picky, you might say, but that’s the way it is if you’re a bookkeeper! - and I wouldn’t refer to this account as a place-holder; it’s a perfectly good account.

In any case, anything you’re still owed at the end of a financial year will survive the closure of accounts (which would zero an expense or income account), so you’re still aware of the money outstanding. Probably not significant in terms of reimbursable expenses such as yours - but useful when dealing with loans I’ve made to my children to assist with large dental bills or home improvements.

I’m not so sure about Derek’s suggestion of marking the transactions as “cleared” and later “reconciled”. Reconciliation involves comparison of your books with a statement from elsewhere, and ensures the two stay in step. In the case of the loans to my children, mentioned above, repayment is made by instalments - perhaps over several years - and neither of these flags would be useful. I’d be inclined simply to record the fact that a claim has been submitted in the Description field of the transaction e.g. “A Stationer - claim submitted to School B on dd/mm/yy”. By inspection of the account’s register, you can easily spot a non-zero balance, find the claim that hasn’t been paid, and know how much it’s overdue.

Call me pedantic, but I’m not comfortable with misuse of a feature (the “reconciled" column) when there’s a more transparent way through.

Michael