Gnucash and 529 plans

[Dale Alspach]

You could make an education subaccount of your checking account and
remember to pay all qualified education expenses from that subaccount. Any
reimbursement from the 529 fund should go there. If the balance in the
subaccount is negative you know that you need to do a transfer. You will
need to choose to include subaccounts when reconciling.

Dale Alspach

On Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 9:23 PM Steve Kelem <steve at kelem.net> wrote:

>    I have a question about recording 529-plan transactions in GnuCash.
>
>    Not the basic movement of funds between checking and 529 account, as
>    discussed 7 times in the GnuCash archives.
>
>    There are two aspects of the 529 plan. The first is getting money into
>    and out of the 529 account. Easy peesy. Already solved.
>
>    The second is making sure that all of the expenditures for the 529 plan
>    (tuition, books, room and board), are matched by a corresponding
>    withdrawal from the 529 account. That's the part that I don't
>    understand how to do. The payment transaction already has a source (my
>    checking account) and a destination (the account representing how much
>    I've paid to the university. Similarly for the 529 account
>    disbursement. How do I keep track of whether I've requested enough
>    disbursements?
>
>    Ideally, when I pay for tuition, for example,
>     1. The funds go out of my checking account into the university
>     2. I need to make a disbursement request from my 529 plan
>     3. The disbursement gets deposited into my bank account.
>
>    (Repeat for books, room & board...)
>
>    My usual problems are remembering to make the disbursement request, and
>    not being able to check that I don't miss a disbursement request or
>    make a duplicate request.
>
>    It would be nice if there were an account that got a copy of the
>    tuition payment and a corresponding debit for the disbursement request.
>    If the account balance is zero, they I'm presumably up-to-date. If the
>    balance is positive, I need to request a disbursement.
>
>    Is there such a mechanism?
>
>    Thanks for any help you can give,
>    Steve
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