Unable to create liability account under expense account

Buddha Buck blaisepascal at gmail.com
Thu Nov 23 23:24:03 EST 2017


GnuCash is fundamentally a double-entry accounting program. If you don't
want to do double-entry accounting, then GnuCash is not the tool for you.
There are not any global settings to change it to a single-entry system.

My question to you is:

Your suggestion of putting a liability accounts payable account under the
associated expense account doesn't make sense to me based on my knowledge
of accounting. However, it seems to make sense to you. Can you explain why
you want to do this?


On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 10:07 PM Suresh Saragadam <saragadamsuresh at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Buddha,
>
> Thanks for the reply,Now I understood may be it is not a general
> accounting practice.
> To my requirement i am not required to record double entry,
> I know that i am spending from my pocket there is no need for income or
> profit and loss statement,
> I just want to track my Expenses. and accounts Payable.
>
> To my requirements, Instead of general accounting practice can i create a
> liability type account under an expense type parent account at-least in
> single entry accounting practice
> If i required to do so can i change any global settings to do so in GNU
> Cash.
>
> Regards.
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 1:33 AM, Buddha Buck <blaisepascal at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> You should talk to your accountant about how to set up your accounts to
>> handle this type of transaction. Your proposed solution (a liability
>> account under the concrete expense account) is not how I would do it, and I
>> believe is generally not considered the proper method of doing it. Things
>> may be different according to the common accounting practices of your
>> jurisdiction, which is why you should talk to your accountant, and not to
>> us, about how to do it.
>>
>> Expense and liability accounts are very different things. They do not
>> show up together on the same reports, they measure different things
>> (expenses measure what money is spent on, liabilities measure money is
>> borrowed from other people), and they have different balances (expenses
>> have debit balances, liabilities have credit balances). They can't
>> generally be mixed or added together.
>>
>> In general, in GnuCash and other accounting packages I've worked with,
>> sub-accounts must be the same general "type" (asset, liability, income,
>> etc) as their parent account. The value/balance of the parent account
>> includes the balance of the child accounts. When you see an account name in
>> GnuCash like "Expenses:Non-Taxable:Charity:Church" That implies that there
>> are total expenses, some of which are non-taxable, some of which are
>> charities, some of which are to the church. The total non-taxable expenses
>> includes those going to charities like your church, your local Makerspace,
>> the local soup kitchen, as well as non-charitable non-taxable income like
>> (in the US) mortgage interest or healthcare. Putting a liability account in
>> such a roll-up would not make sense.
>>
>> For your situation, I would have an A/P liability account completely
>> separate from the Material Expenses hierarchy, and when I received an
>> invoice for cement, I would create a transaction that debited the cement
>> expense account and credited the A/P liability account. Then, when I paid
>> the bill, I would create a transaction that debited the A/P liability
>> account and credited the associated cash/banking account.
>>
>> If you use the "Business Features" within GnuCash it will handle the
>> details in the previous paragraph semi-automatically, including creating
>> the A/P account.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 2:30 PM Suresh Saragadam <
>> saragadamsuresh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I am working on a small construction work where i need to record my
>>> expenses for both material and men (labour)
>>>
>>> Initially i need to create expense accounts for
>>>
>>> sand, stone,cement, under Total Material Expences
>>>
>>> Total Material Expences
>>> |_sand
>>> |_cement
>>> |_stone
>>>
>>> i am purchasing cement on credit(Loan) that is accounts payable i.e.
>>> liability
>>>
>>> Here i need to create liability account for cement under material
>>> expenses,
>>> but i am unable to create a liability account for cement under material
>>> expense account
>>>
>>> so that i can record total material spend including liability for cement
>>>
>>> this is very minimum accounting requirement.
>>>
>>> Regards
>>>
>>> Suresh
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>>
>


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