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

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/31/2016 3:02 PM, Oon-Ee Ng wrote:
> 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:-
I can only tell you how I would handle this.

1) Like you I would create an account with a name like  "Outstanding 
Loans". But I would NOT  post transactions to this account. Instead it 
would be a placeholder account (parent) and under it I would create an 
account for each debtor as a debtor comes into existence.
2) When a debtor makes a payment, enter the transaction to that debtor's 
account. Likewise if the debtor borrows an additional amount.

3) THEN:
    a) The balance shown for the "Outstanding Loans" account will be the 
total you have out on loan.
    b) The balance of each debtor's account will  be the amount of debt 
currently outstanding for that debtor.

4) No, this will NOT mean having to always see a cluttered CoA. You can 
normally have the display property of "Outstanding Loans" collapsed. You 
only expand that when you want to see the individual debtor accounts (to 
enter another loan or to record a loan payment)

Michael D Novack