Handling many small-value loans (short, medium, and long-term)

[Oon-Ee Ng]

Hi,

I'm using GnuCash for personal finances (myself and my wife's accounts).

Currently I have a 'Outstanding Loans' account which keeps track of
money either of us has loaned out to individuals. Something as simple
as passing a twenty to a friend who's short on cash, or using our
credit cards to help a family member purchase an online item.

It got quite hard to track what had (or hadn't) been returned, so I
created a second 'Settled Loans' account which I would move
transactions to once they were paid off in full. So the typical way
things would work would be:-

1. I lend one dollar to friend A and record it as a transfer of one
dollar from my cash account to the 'Outstanding Loans' account.

2. When the dollar is repaid (perhaps by an online transfer to my
savings account), I record that as a transfer of one dollar from the
'Outstanding Loans' account to my savings account.

Once in a while I 'clean up' the 'Outstanding Loans' account by moving
paired transactions from it to 'Settled Loans', so its easier to see
loans which have NOT been re-couped. Otherwise all I have to go on is
the total amount, which is tedious to go through (primarily because I
have many of these transactions, especially in terms of helping do
online payments for less tech-savvy family members).

Disadvantages is the clean up is very manual. I hardly make mistakes
but it does cause a problem when loans extend over the financial year
end. Hardly a big issue but something I think could be done better,
but can't figure out how. Any suggestions?