Need help tracking monthly bills

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at gmail.com
Mon Dec 5 18:11:43 EST 2016


Chris,

I use the A/P business feature for all my personal bills. I enter other purchases, like groceries, manually.

When new bills come in, I create them using the ‘open date’ as the date of the bill/statement. I set the ‘posting date’ to either the beginning of the date range of service on the statement itself. So if this is for a future period like internet service, it won’t post until then, or if for past usage like electricity and water, it will post to the previous period, or earlier in this period. Most bills have either a standard time-frame for due dates, or a set due date. I either use pre-set terms per Vendor (e.g—14 days) or manually set the due date when posting.

When I pay these bills, I use the Vendor > Process Payment feature.

If I pay anything in advance - like internet service, I set it to post to a pre-paid Asset account, then setup a recurring transaction to ‘use’ the asset and post it against my internet service expense account. I do the same for Auto Insurance because I pay that 6 months in advance. The auto-transactions handle the expensing each month.

This might sound more complicated than some care for but it achieves several things:

#1 - everything is expensed in the proper periods. This usually does not coincide with the period I make the payment or when the payment might clear.
#2 - by entering a bill in the A/P system, I enter each line item as a math check. I use the Duplicate Bill function when a new one comes in, and then just adjust any variations on the line items. This is really handy because I get one bill for electrical, water, sewer and garbage, but have separate expense accounts for them. Using the Bill feature allows me to post them to separate expense accounts, check the utility company’s math, and give me data to track my usage if I want it. (I enter the KW or Gal used with a ‘price’, this also allows me to see if those prices/rates have gone up or not) The first bill takes a bit of time to set up as you decide what accounts you want to use, but after that, you’re just duplicating this so you are only editing a few amounts here or there.
#3 - If I pay a bill late, it is easy to enter the late fee and expense it to a separate account rather than the same one as the utility or service. (So I didn’t really spend $5 more that month in electricity, I was just not careful enough to pay the bill on time. If I lumped that in on the next bill, I wouldn’t be able to directly see what my forgetfulness has cost me)
#4 - I can run a Vendor report and see how my balance stands with each company that bills me. (should always be zero, or under by the amount of the last bill, if I am current) I can match up and catch missing payments right away. I use the bill# or bill date as a memo when entering payment to match them up by eye.
#5 - I can also search for Vendors Bills by Vendor and see if they are marked paid or not. (there is a Paid column with checkboxes) This comes in really handy if your paying practice is out of whack with the order bills come in and are due. It helps you spot one you missed right away.
#6 - If you are really pedantic like me, this allows you to separate out line-item taxes from actual usage. While you can’t take much action to reduce those taxes, it is quite eye-opening to see just how much of a service bill is either taxes or government mandated fees, especially added up over a year time frame. (and yes, I enter all store receipts with separate sales tax splits as well, though I enter these manually, not in the A/P system)
#7 - The Liabilities account tells me what is outstanding at the moment. A quick comparison against my cash on hand tells me how careful I need to watch any discretionary spending. (since I don’t have loans) If you have loans that are entered correctly, you will get accurate net-worth & balance sheet report numbers.
#8 - You can set alerts when bills you have already entered are nearing their due date or have come past due. This will pop up when you next start GnuCash or while you are using it if you keep it open.
#9 - Using bills to enter pre-paid expenses against an asset account and then auto-expensed not only puts the right amount into each month, but shows you how much you are due for refund should you cancel service before the billing cycle is up. Technically, that pre-paid amount IS an asset to you until you use the service. It is not an expense yet.

This isn’t a substitute for budgeting. That’s a separate function. But cleaning up what posts to which periods might help you make a more accurate budget.
I also am not familiar with mortgages or other loans in GnuCash yet. Though I have seen that several HowTo’s exist. I’m sure there is a feature to set up a loan, enter the current balance and payment schedule and then see if you are current or not. I would really be surprised if this didn’t exist. But every spreadsheet app has a template for this builtin so if you had to do it separately, it should be trivial.

Best of luck,

Adrien


> On Dec 4, 2016, at 7:55 PM, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
> 
> From: Chris <chris_gsw2000 at yahoo.com <mailto:chris_gsw2000 at yahoo.com>>
> Subject: Need help tracking monthly bills
> Date: December 3, 2016 at 9:50:11 PM CST
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> 
> 
> Hi, I recently switched from using Excel spreadsheets to GNUCASH to
> manage and track household finances. The learning curve has been
> difficult but not impossible and I now have a more comprehensive view of
> of everything.
> 
> Now to my problem. Our monthly bills come in various formats and some
> like the home mortgage don't send monthly statements at all. I have a
> tendency to forget which have been paid and one thing the spreadsheet
> provided was a quick glance to see which were paid and which ones
> weren't. I am trying to achieve the same in GNUCASH. Scheduled
> transactions don't seem work well for this.
> 
> The closest I have come is using a transaction report but it only
> provides half of what I need. I have been able to customize the options
> to show what bills have been paid (what accounts have been posted to
> this month) but it doesn't show which have not been paid (not posted to
> this month). I have selected all of the appropriate accounts but can't
> find a way for it to show. Ideally It would show the one's not paid as
> zero for this month.
> 
> As I'm new I suspect I am missing something simple or some feature I
> haven't explored yet so any help would be appreciated.



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