Granular tracking of reimbursed expenses
Macho Philipovich
macho at resist.ca
Sun Oct 16 19:35:59 EDT 2016
Hi Edward,
Of course, that makes sense, thanks. I haven't tried it yet, and am
somewhat uncomfortable about the implications of creating subaccounts
under my chequing account, but if it saves me creating a custom report,
then it probably makes sense.
Last question: Is it necessary to create subaccounts under
Expenses:Health, the way you've done here? It seems to me the same could
be achieved without doing so.
Thanks again for your help,
Macho
On 2016-10-16 07:22 PM, Edward Doolittle wrote:
> Hi Macho,
>
> Here's a suggestion, that's maybe a bit kludgy and involves changing
> your account structure, but it might spare you from having to code
> your own custom report.
>
> First, you don't necessarily need subaccounts of Assets:Reimbursable
> if you're going to use the Cash Flow report. Subaccounts won't hurt,
> and they maybe useful for other purposes, but for what I'm going to
> suggest you will be creating a single cash flow report that includes
> all of the reimbursable accounts. The cash flow report will just lump
> them all together anyway, as transactions that are inside the
> membrane; the report will calculate the amounts that cross the membrane.
>
> The idea is to make the other leg(s) of such transactions distinctive.
> For example, when you pay a $100 physio bill, for example, you would have
>
> cr. Assets:Chequing:Insurance Policy A $100
> dr. Expenses:Health:Insurance Policy A $20
> dr. Assets:Reimbursable $80
>
> When you get reimbursed,
>
> dr. Assets:Chequing:Insurance Policy A $80
> cr. Assets:Reimbursable $80
>
> When you pay a dental bill might look like this
>
> cr. Assets:Chequing:Insurance Policy B $200
> dr. Expenses:Health:Insurance Policy B $40
> dr. Assets:Reimbursable $160
>
> When your dental bill is reimbursed,
>
> dr. Assets:Chequing:Insurance Policy B $160
> cr. Assets:Reimbursable $160
>
> When you set up the cash flow report, include all the
> Assets:Reimbursable accounts that hold insurance transactions. (In the
> above example, there's only one, but you may want to break things into
> subaccounts, as Michael Novack suggests.) Then the cash flow report
> will enumerate flow between all your selected reimbursable accounts
> and each of the Assets:Chequing:Insurance Policy x accounts, which is
> I think the information that you want.
>
> When you want a complete view of your chequing account, you'll have to
> "open subaccounts". The same when you reconcile your chequing account.
>
> Does that do what you want?
>
> Edward
>
> On 16 October 2016 at 16:44, Macho Philipovich <macho at resist.ca
> <mailto:macho at resist.ca>> wrote:
>
> Thanks!
>
> This gets me immeasurably closer than I was before. Two problems
> remain, though.
>
> First, the Cash Flow Report aggregates all the children accounts
> into one global sum, and breaks its results down according to the
> accounts from which and to which the money came and went. Because
> I'm always paying from a single bank account, it ends up in one
> place, and so that's not fatal, except that the aggregate sum I
> end up with doesn't let me see whether, for example, I exceeded
> the $750 limit in the example I gave below on a particular child
> account. You can only see whether you exceeded the global cut-off.
>
> Second, although it is possible to get around this by creating a
> separate Cash Flow Report for each child account, that seems
> unnecessarily complicated and each report largely contains
> irrelevant information, with only one line being of interest, and
> that line is not particularly obvious to pick out.
>
> I suspect that on the basis of the Cash Flow Report I could code a
> single custom report that contains all the information I want (and
> not more) if I really had to, but I just want to check with the
> members of this list first that there's no out-of-the-box solution
> that would solve the problem before I go to the trouble. Please
> let me know!
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Macho
>
>
> On 2016-10-16 04:45 PM, Edward Doolittle wrote:
>> I think you want a Cash Flow Report. Reports -> Income & Expense
>> -> Cash Flow. In Options -> Accounts, select your
>> Assets:Receivable (and perhaps click the button to Select
>> Children). In Options -> General, select the start and end dates.
>> It's best if you can use the drop-down menus to select current
>> month or current quarter or current accounting period; otherwise
>> you'll have to edit the start and end dates each time you use the
>> report.
>>
>> You will have to check that there are no reimbursements from
>> other sources in the account, or it will affect your subtotals.
>> What I would do is set up a subaccount of Assets:Receivable for
>> your insurance reimbursable expenses, then run the report on that
>> subaccount instead of on Assets:Receivable.
>>
>> When you've set it up the way you like, you can save the report
>> configuration for easy access.
>>
>> Edward)
>>
>> On 16 October 2016 at 07:47, Macho Philipovich <macho at resist.ca
>> <mailto:macho at resist.ca>> 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?
>>
>> Thanks so much for your help!
>>
>> Macho
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Edward Doolittle
>> Associate Professor of Mathematics
>> First Nations University of Canada
>> 1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2
>>
>> « Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent
>> mécontents et un ingrat. »
>> -- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI
>
>
>
>
> --
> Edward Doolittle
> Associate Professor of Mathematics
> First Nations University of Canada
> 1 First Nations Way, Regina SK S4S 7K2
>
> « Toutes les fois que je donne une place vacante, je fais cent
> mécontents et un ingrat. »
> -- Louis XIV, dans Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, Chap. XXVI
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