[GNC] help setting accounts to track contributions

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 5/4/2018 4:13 AM, Gio Bacareza wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My partner and I are moving in together and we'd like to share expenses
> like groceries, rent, etc. So we'd like to track expenses as well as our
> appropriate contributions to make sure that we both are contributing
> equally to house expenses.
>
> How should I set up the contribution? Under what main account type should
> it be? Any recommendations?
>
I am going to suggest something more straight forward than treating 
contributions as "income", less distorting to what the situation is. 
Imagine that this were an ordinary (business) partnership, income, 
expenses, and partner's "drawings" or "contributions" (partner's drawing 
accounts are under equity, representing each partner's investment in the 
enterprise). In other words, you can look in a standard accounting text 
under "accounting for partnerships".

OK, this is a special sort of partnership that only has expenses, no 
income. So the drawing account of each partner will only show 
contributions. Going to be very easy to see if the total contributions 
are equal or not.

In other words, a funny set of books, in effect just "expenses" and 
"equity" trees with meaningful content. You can leave the top level 
parents "assets", "income", and "liabilities" in there, but usually 
these would have no contents. Or perhaps because of how you run your 
household, they might. For example, could be a "cookie jar" for small 
amounts of cash held on hand, so something under assets. Or there might 
be a situation where one partner pays a large bill but that partner's 
contributions are already higher. So treat that as a loan to the 
partnership and now something under "liabilities"

Michael D Novack

-- 
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality of the grave.