Granular tracking of reimbursed expenses

Edward Doolittle edward.doolittle at gmail.com
Mon Oct 17 00:02:26 EDT 2016


Hi Macho,

For what you asked, it's not necessary to separate the expense accounts
into subaccounts. I separated them just because it's far easier to later
combine separated accounts than it is to split a combined account. But if
you're sure you'll never need the amounts separately, you can combine them.

Edward

On 16 October 2016 at 17:35, Macho Philipovich <macho at resist.ca> wrote:

> 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> 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> 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
>
>
>


-- 
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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