Granular tracking of reimbursed expenses

Sun Oct 23 02:44:17 EDT 2016

It's not the same as my original suggestion. All of my previous suggestions
were to put Assets:Reimbursable:InsuranceX accounts (or variations) "inside
the membrane" in the cash flow report. Now I'm suggesting you put your
chequing account and any other account involved in making payments or
receiving reimbursements "inside the membrane".

Of course, you'll see a lot of activity across the membrane, most of which
will be irrelevant. However, among the list of accounts to which money goes
to/from will be your Assets:Reimbursable:InsuranceX accounts, which I
believe will give you exactly the numbers you need.

To set this up, you don't need to add subaccounts to your chequing account.
You will need to add subaccounts to Assets:Reimbursable, however.
Transactions will appear as follows. For example, when you pay a $100
physio bill, you would have

cr. Assets:Chequing $100
dr. Expenses:Health:Insurance Policy A $20
dr. Assets:Reimbursable:Insurance Policy A $80

When you get reimbursed,

dr. Assets:Chequing $80
cr. Assets:Reimbursable:Insurance Policy A $80

When you pay a dental bill might look like this

cr. Assets:Chequing $200
dr. Expenses:Health:Insurance Policy B $40
dr. Assets:Reimbursable:Insurance Policy B $160

When your dental bill is reimbursed,

dr. Assets:Chequing $160
cr. Assets:Reimbursable:Insurance Policy B $160

When you run the cash flow report, you'll get a lot of flow in and out of
the chequing account, but the items you should concentrate on are flows
into and out of Assets:Reimburasble:Insurance Policy A and
Assets:Reimbursable:Insurance Policy B. Unfortunately, you'll have to sift
through a lot of accounts, but fortunately, they're in alphabetical order
so the asset accounts you're interested in can be picked out quickly. Any
difference between the cash flow into and out of an
Assets:Reimbursable:Insurance Policy X account will indicate a
reimbursement not yet complete.

I'm not sure whether that's adequate for your purposes, but it give you a
few options to choose from.

I'm starting to think Michael Novack's suggestion might be best, but it all
depends on exactly what you want. On the other hand, if you structure
things as Michael Novack suggests, you might be able to quickly code an ad
hoc report based on that account structure, which is yet another option.

Edward

On 22 October 2016 at 15:30, Macho Philipovich <macho at resist.ca> wrote:

> Thanks Edward.
>
> Perhaps I'm not understanding, but isn't this the same as the initial
> suggestion you made?
>
> As I remember it, the problem was that when I select all of the insuranceX
> accounts in the cash flow report, it simply aggregates them into an overall
> total and the breakdown it gives instead displays all of the other accounts
> into and from which money has been transferred with respect to the selected
> accounts.
>
> I would be very pleased if I'm mistaken about any of this, so please let
> me know!
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Macho
>
> On 2016-10-22 05:23 PM, Edward Doolittle wrote:
>
> [Following up on my own message.]
>
> Hi Macho,
>
> I have been thinking about this, and I think I had a bit of a mental block
> before. I believe you can get the information you want without
> restructuring your chequing account, only your
> assets:reimbursable:insuranceX accounts.
>
> Use a cash flow report, including all accounts with which you have paid
> for insurance expenses, or accepted reimbursements. We have been using your
> chequing account as an example, but you should also include credit card
> accounts or any other accounts used to pay your insurance-related bills.
>
> The cash flow report will display summaries of all amounts into and out of
> the chosen accounts. Focus on the amounts into and out of the assets:
> reimbursement:insuranceA, assets:reimbursement:insuranceB, etc.
>
> I don't know of a way to get the cash flow report to report on net flows
> (in - out), which is probably of interest. Perhaps there's another report
> that will work.
>
> Edward
>
> On 16 October 2016 at 22:02, Edward Doolittle <edward.doolittle at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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>>>>> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
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>>>>> -----
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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
>>
>
>
>
> --
> 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