Question from new subscriber

[Adrien Monteleone]

Bill,

I replied yesterday evening, but I see somehow that got threaded into a different discussion, at least on my end. However, there is no need to repost a question. If you don’t get an answer right away, be patient.

Here’s what I sent:

What exactly is the hang up?

You're describing needing 10 ‘virtual savings accounts’ to segregate funds that exist in a real bank account.

Have you managed to set up the bank account and the child virtual accounts?

Are you transferring funds to them manually or do you want an automatic ‘draft’ out of checking?

If you want something automated, look into scheduled transactions. (SX)

I don’t think they’ll fire on any particular event (like a deposit) but they can fire on a schedule. It is possible to use formulas in them to calculate amounts, but I’ve never messed with that part to know if you can base this off of the current account balance or not.

Setting up say to pull $100 a month at the end of the month for example into each account is fairly straightforward. You can certainly transfer different amounts on different schedules, but if you don’t mind doing it all at the same time for each sub-account, you can use a single SX with splits and custom amounts for each one.

If you want to do this manually, just use the transfer button as desired, or enter the transaction directly.

Depending on how you want to handle payment, you could transfer the funds back as a separate transaction, or make it part of the payment transaction.

Is it the entry for these you are having issue with?

A transfer out of checking and into a sub-account would look something like this:

Dr. Assets:Checking:Sub-1	$100
	Cr. Assets:Checking		$100

A transfer back at the end of the year, would be the opposite.

Doing multiples at once would look like this:

Dr. Assets:Checking:Sub-1	$100
Dr. Assets:Checking:Sub-2	$ 50
Dr. Assets:Checking:Sub-3	$ 25
Dr. etc.
	Cr. Assets:Checking		$175(+)

The payment combined with the annual transfer can look like this (assuming you aren’t using business features to make the payment):

Dr. Assets:Checking			$1000
Dr. Liabilities:Annual Bill Account	$1000
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Sub-1		$ 700
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Sub-2		$ 200
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Sub-3		$ 100
	Cr. etc.
	Cr. Assets:Checking			$1000

or you could skip the use of Assets:Checking parent account to make the payment and just ‘pay’ the bill out of the ‘virtual’ sub-accounts directly.

Dr. Liabilities:Annual Bill Account	$1000
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Sub-1		$ 700
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Sub-2		$ 200
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Sub-3		$ 100
	Cr. etc.

If you’re using the business features to pay the bill, then doing a transfer back to checking will make life easier. Again, this can be each account separately, or as a single transaction with 11 splits. (1 split for each sub account as a credit and one for the parent real account as a debit)

Final note, the software doesn’t auto-balance anything. The reconciliation process is something you do manually by marking transactions as ‘reconciled’ when your statement comes in. If it doesn’t balance, you have the option of cancelling the reconciliation, or making an adjusting entry to an account of your choice to make it balance. (such as Expenses:Miscellaneous, the Imbalance account , or the Orphan account)


Regards,
Adrien

> On Jan 26, 2018, at 7:01 PM, Bill Hessinger via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Question to GNUcash Mailing list:
> 
> I have just loaded version 2.6.19 onto my Mac laptop.  Could someone walk me thru (via an email) setting up the following procedure?
> 
> Primary checking account (all funds stored here).  No web connection to bank required.
> 	10 sub-accounts where  funds will be transferred on a monthly basis out of the primary account in order  to accumulate to pay a yearly due bill.  At payment time the accumulated funds will be transferred back into the primary account and a check will be deducted from the primary balance. 
> 	It sounds so simple, but I can’t seem to set it up properly.  Hopefully once a month the software will balance GNUcash ledger to the bank statement.
> 
> Hope you’re having a good day,
> 
> Billy
> wahessin at yahoo.com
> 770-335-2431
> 
> 
> 
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