[GNC] Modelling employee expenses

[Rich Shepard]

On Tue, 22 May 2018, Matthew Pounsett wrote:

> No, I have an expense item from an employee which they need to be
> reimbursed for. The employee includes as part of their expense report a
> receipt from the original vendor, which I'd like to track as a bill (for
> the reasons stated in my first email).

Matthew,

   Thanks for clarifying. Since you're re-imbursing your employee your
bookkeeping system (GnuCash) doesn't need to know the vendor. If I were you
and wanted to track employee re-imbursements by vendor I'd keep a
spreadsheet or text file with that information. Or, I'd enter the vendor's
name in the transaction's memo field.

> You mentioned you don't have employees... in your region can you get to
> balance sales tax from purchases against sales tax from sales? If so, how
> do you track an out of pocket expense that your corporation needs to
> reimburse you for when there are sales taxes involved?

   Oregon, for better or worse, does not have any sales taxes. We have high
property and income taxes instead so we residents pay for what visitors get
for free. For example, a cousin of mine lived in northern California and
built his house there. He drove up to Medford, OR, to purchase all the
materials -- tax free -- and saved all the California tax amounts. We also
cannot pump gasoline into our vehicles (unless they're motorcycles), but I
can drive my diesel pickup truck to the same station and pump the diesel
fuel myself. Never look for logic (or rationality) when it comes to
politics.

   Your accountant can probably advise you how to keep your books for
employee expenses, vendors, and sales taxes. I've had my accountant advise
me how to handle transactions that are not blazingly obvious to me as a
non-finance professional.

Best regards,

Rich