How do I create an Expense sub-account?

[DaveC49]

Hi ph,

My apologies in advance if I'm trying to teach you to suck eggs!

After following the thread I think you may benefit from reading the
Wikipedia article on double entry accounting and then rereading the
introductory material on accounts and sub-accounts and creating and editing
accounts in the getting started section of the documentation.

One possible way of handling it is to have two asset sub-accounts, one for
accessible funds for Kid and a second for funds which are his but not
accessible and then transfer the funds to whichever asset account is
appropriate. 

Under accounting procedures which Gnucash implements, you cannot remove an
asset  without a transaction without transferring its balance to another
account, usually an expense account when you purchase the asset or an income
account when you sell it  or to another asset account if you are shifting
the asset. You can hide accounts (however unhiding them can be problematical 
use View->FilterBy the select the Other tab and select show hidden accounts
which will display the hidden account and you then edit it and unclick the
hidden option to restore permanent display of the account). This may achieve
what you want in terms of not having to see the "Kid"s non accessible funds.

As William has indicated both income and expense accounts are actually
special equity accounts which are used to record transactions in the current
accounting period and for a business they are used to calculate the
profit/loss for that accounting period  ( or surplus/deficit for a non
profit organisation). Normally at the end of the period the differences in
their balances are transferred to an equity account.  This is called
'closing the accounts' in accounting parlance.

 The simplest way to proceed is to create entity placeholder accounts
labelled "Dad " and "Kid" under each of the Top Level account headings
(Asset, Liability, Equity etc) and then create the accounts you use under
the appropriate placeholder account. This would allow you to get  separate
subtotal headings for each of the entities "Dad " and "Kid" in each of the
categories. I do this to have my personal accounts, my wifes' personal
accounts and her business accounts all in a single file.  This works fine
for keeping the accounts separate but in one file. If I need to separate
then I pull the reports into spreadsheets and manipulate them

I have also created top level accounts as the Placeholders "Dad" and "Kid"
and created Asset, Liability, Equity, etc accounts as required undereach of
the the top level placeholders. This should also work, but I haven't yet 
experimented with how this affects what is presented in reports as normal
business practice would be to have a separate file for each separate entity.

Some possible transaction entries which may make the above clearer:

*Transferring $60 to kid's account from your account, $20 of which is
accessible funds and $40 of which is inaccessible funds.* the above could
all be done in a single transaction from your account using multiple splits
as shown  for example ( : notation  indicates that the name following the :
is a sub-account of the account name preceding the :)

                                                                             
Debit                   Credit              Effect on account balance
Asset:You: Bank                                                                         
$60                    decrease
Expense:You:TransfersToKid                  $20                                               
increase
Asset:Kid:Bank:InaccessibleFunds       $40                                                
increase
Income:Kid::TransferFromParent                                      $60                  
increase

*Kid spending $10 on Candy*

Asset:Kid:Bank:AccessibleFunds                                       $10                  
decrease
Expense:Kid:Candy                                    $10                                               
increase


Hope this helps


Davec49



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