How best to record wages I owe myslef?

[Adrien Monteleone]

Speak to an accountant familiar with your jurisdiction, but I would investigate using a draw instead of a paycheck if the company can’t reliably have the cash flow to issue that paycheck.

If you need to record payment owed in specific periods but can’t issue payment, then yes, liability accounts are the way to go.

You don’t need to be a fictitious vendor, you could use the ‘employee’ function of GnuCash. But again, be sure to consult with an accountant for tax implications on certain methods and designations.

If you go the employee route, there are tutorials to help you with payroll tax liabilities setup. It might be a good idea to look at those how-to’s anyway to get a grasp of how to handle those issues.

Of course, unless you are filing business taxes as an individual rather than separate returns, you should probably keep separate personal and business books to separate concerns. Your accountant can provide specific advice on this area as well.


> On Jan 11, 2017, at 4:25 AM, gnucash-user-request at gnucash.org wrote:
> 
> From: John Whitmore <arigead at gmail.com <mailto:arigead at gmail.com>>
> Subject: How best to record wages I owe myslef?
> Date: January 10, 2017 at 3:34:09 PM CST
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org>
> 
> 
> I'm running a small company, just me on the wage books. I'm paying myself as
> a normal employee and my company is paying the various taxes out of those
> wages.
> 
> The thing is that at times the company can't afford to pay those wages,
> waiting for customers to pay. So I'm paying the tax on my salary but I'm not
> actually paying myself. I consider my company owes me that salary and it'll be
> paid when customers pay.
> 
> My question is how best to record this in GnuCash. I could use Accounts Payable
> and make up a ficticious vender. But I'm not sure that abstraction works as I
> might go a few months with the owed money growing a bit. I was thinking that
> it's maybe closer to VAT or Sales Tax and that it's better recorded as a
> liability. My problem with that is that I'll end up with a current account,
> Expense:Wages, and Liability:Wages which is going to take a bit of juggling.
> 
> If I have this right at the end of the month I could take money from
> Expense:wages to Liability:wages and then when the companies ship comes in
> transfer money from CurrentAccount to Liability:Wages.
> 
> Sorry this is probably a stupid question, as everybody says here "I'm not an
> account but..." so anyhow just though I'd check that a Liability is a good way
> to do things. Thanks for any advice for all the non accountants ;-)