Granular tracking of reimbursed expenses

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 10/16/2016 9:47 AM, Macho Philipovich wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I've been using an overarching Assets:Reimbursable account to handle 
> my reimbursable expenses. I'd like to be able to see how much I've 
> been reimbursed in the current period for specific costs, to make sure 
> that I don't exceed my insurance's annual maximums. For example, 80% 
> of my physiotherapy costs are reimbursed up to a maximum of $750 per 
> year, which I would like to stay within.
>
> With my current setup, when I incur the expense, 20% is assigned to a 
> health expense account and the other 80% to reimbursable, but the 80% 
> is then subtracted off of that account when I'm reimbursed and the 
> account returns to zero, so there's no obvious way to me to do this 
> cumulative kind of tracking. I don't want to determine the how much 
> has been reimbursed by multiplying my health expense account total by 
> four (80% ÷ 20%) for a few reasons, notably because it would be broken 
> by the fact that my expenses become 100% reimbursable after I hit an 
> overall annual out-of-pocket maximum of $400.
>
> Is there an easy fix that I'm missing?

Yes. And this is a situation very much like other asset accounts where 
we want to be able to access the "balance" but still be able to easily 
see the amounts in and the amounts out as well as total in and total 
out  (for example: a "fixed" asset that is subject both to depreciation 
AND life extending repair costs added to the basis).

Make your "reimbursable" a parent account that has two children. One of 
these will be debited (for that 80% of a qualifying medical expense) and 
the other will be CREDITED for reimbursements received (the debit side 
of that transaction will be your bank account).

Now you will be able to see the balance pending reimbursement (that's 
what the parent will show), the all the 80% transactions and their total 
(that's the balance of that account) and all the reimbursements and 
their total (that's the balance of that account).

Michael D Novack