[GNC] Modelling employee expenses

[Matthew Pounsett]

I'm just starting to use the business functions of GnuCash.. most things
I've sorted out fairly easily, but I'm having issues figuring out the best
way to use Employee expense vouchers.

The intended use looks pretty straightforward: enter line items attached to
the appropriate expense account, post, pay the employee.  However, I have
two problems with that:
1) the voucher line item descriptions aren't included in the split
descriptions in the expense accounts, so it's hard to trace an item back to
its purpose from looking at an expense ledger
2) there's no easy way to deal with taxes in the employee vouchers, so my
purchases tax is unaccounted for

So.. I'd like to assign employee expenses to some other account type, and
enter the receipts as vendor bills.  I'm trying to decide how to tie the
two together.

My first thought was that employee expenses are obviously a liability,
however that ends up balancing a liability against a liability
(Liabilities:Employee Expenses vs. Liabilities:Accounts Payable).  Perhaps
an asset makes more sense?  Balance Liabilities:Accounts Payable against
Assets:Employee Expenses, and then pay bills out of that asset?

While I'm certain using an asset would work, I'm curious how do other
people do this?

Cheers,
   Matt Pounsett