Subaccounts [WAS Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets]

Tue Jan 30 02:44:45 EST 2018

Matt,

You lost me again.

I don’t understand why you’d have a negative 'segmented spending money' asset.

You receive a paycheck, say $1000.

You earmark 50% of that into various sub-accounts.

You still have $1000.

There’s no negative balance on any asset account.

Perhaps your checking account holds $500 of that money, and each of four sub-accounts hold $250, $150, $50 & $50 respectively. That all adds up to $1000.

The act of earmarking funds moves you from one account with a single positive $1000 balance to 5 accounts totaling a positive $1000 balance NONE of which are negative.

Where’s the ‘negative segmented money account?’

Please describe with debits and credits. I don’t see it. What I see is this:

Receipt of money with segregation:

Dr. Assets:Checking		$500
Dr. Assets:Checking:Vacation	$250
Dr. Assets:Checking:Insurance	$150
Dr. Assets:Checking:Dining	$ 50
Dr. Assets:Checking:Coffee&Tea	$ 50
	Cr. Income:Salary		$1000

When you go out for lunch I see this:

Dr. Expenses:Dining			$20
	Cr. Assets:Checking:Dining		$20

How does recording an expense INCREASE the allocated cash for Dining as you describe? (making it less negative) How was it negative in the first place? What transaction did you record to make it so? Note, for an asset to be ‘negative’ it has to have a ‘credit’ balance, that is, credits have to be greater than debits. Making an asset account ‘less negative’ is a debit transaction. (since asset accounts are usually debit positive balanced) Debits don’t decrease an asset, they increase it. Spending money never gives you more to spend, it means you have less. Spending money is always (eventually) a credit to assets, never a debit.

I can’t see any scenario where that above example of going out for lunch looks like this:

Dr. Expenses:Dining		$20
Dr. Assets:Checking:Dining	$20
	Cr. ????			$40

If that would even begin to make any sense why $40 is moving somewhere instead of just $20.

Note, doing this:

Dr. Assets:Checking:Dining	$20
	Cr. Expenses:Dining		$20

Is an incorrect transaction if you SPENT the money. (as opposed to receiving a refund, or correcting a prior error) Crediting an expense is a refund/reversing condition, not a normal expenditure.

When you record the receipt of money, that goes to an income/revenue account, split with the physical asset account for the form you received the payment in. Generally, this will be a credit to ‘income’ and a debit to ‘cash.’ Where and how do you record the receipt of money as a credit to an asset instead and how does that balance against your credit to your income account?

i.e.—

Dr. ????	$1000
	Cr. Income:Salary	$1000
	Cr. Assets:?????	?????

Regards,
Adrien

> On Jan 29, 2018, at 11:25 PM, Matt Graham <matt_graham2001 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ah, true. I guess this is why I favored "triggered transactions " rather than "template transactions".
> 
> I want a transaction involving expense account "spending money" to automatically add two more splits to reduce the asset account "segmented spending money" balanced by increasing the value of "allocated cash" asset acct (increase = make it less negative).
> 
> For saving up for something expensive, I would still set up the above, but I would need to manually change the numbers if I wanted to return the allocation to zero.
> 
> So when I enter:
> 
> Cr account I used to pay insurance 1150
> Dr expense account for insurance (with the trigger attached) 1150
> 
> I would want gnucash to automatically add the splits
> 
> Cr account I am using to segment insurance money 1150
> Dr account showing allocated cash 1150.
> 
> I would the (during my reconciling/budget review) need to amend that transaction (or create a new one to return the insurance allocation to zero.
> 
> For many of my other money allocations (eg restaurants/cafe) I wouldnt change it - underspending means the money is available for later.
> 
> Am I understanding you right?
> 
> 
> Thanks and regards,
> Matt
> 
> 
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at dialup4less.com>
> Date: 30/1/18 09:31 (GMT+10:00)
> To: Matt Graham <matt_graham2001 at hotmail.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: Re: Subaccounts [WAS Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets]
> 
> On 1/28/2018 8:11 PM, Matt Graham wrote:
> ........ When you look at what liabilities really are, Adrien and I concluded on this thread that this situation (segmenting money for future) is really using a separate asset account. After all - creating a liability INCREASES your cash available. .......
> Yes, the problem precisely, we aren't assigning the same meaning to "available" and "liability"
> 
> But your example of what you would like to see:
> 
> Template transactions (I'd probably call them "Triggerred transactions", but it doesn'tmatter) sound awesome. As someone else highlighted, there are implementation difficulties to consider, but I dont think that it would be too onerous.
> 
> In terms of spending from another account but recording against a sub-account, its easy:
> Dr Exp whatever account
> Cr Cash I pay for something awesome
> Dr Parent account the amount I paid
> Cr sub-account the amount I paid
> 
> SPECIAL CASE of a GENERAL requirement. The special case might be easy to implement BUT in general the amounts are NOT going to be the same.
> 
> This is actually a fairly common situation for me, say one of the organizations SELLS a tee shirt (fundraising, but tee shirts might also be being given away to volunteers).
> Db   Cash
> Cr   Sales
> Db   Cost of goods sold
> Cr   Tee shirt inventory
>    << the shirts might be being sold for $20 but cost the organization $7 >>
> 
> Or, and though this is common with our restricted funds (not exactly matching) I will give an example precisely for your situation. You socked away into this reserve $100/mo toward the annual renewal of your car insurance based on your ESTIMATE of what that annual bill will be. But when the bill arrives it is for $1150 or $1250. In both cases you pay the bill and release the restriction, yes? << in one case, you had more in the fund than needed but it still can be released to general purposes, in the other you used all of the fund AND had to add some general funds >>
> 
> Michael D Novack
> 
> 
> 
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Regards,
Adrien