[GNC] Changing account tree on large database

[Adrien Monteleone]

> On Apr 26, 2019, at 8:49 PM, Cricket Onebit <cricketbeautiful at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> (Aside: https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/FAQ#SQL_Database recommends not using
> the SQL just yet. Several posts on this list say otherwise. Out of date
> manual, or optimistic / lucky users?)

There was some display issue with business info when I first moved from 2.6.19 to 3.0, but that was fixed quickly and no data was lost. That is the only issue I’ve encountered personally, but you can check out Bugzilla and read over the SQL bugs to see if they scare you away from it, or you find you can live with them. (I’m using Sqlite3 backend for a few years now)

> 
> I do need to calculate how much the kids owe us for things they said they'd
> pay us back for. The cheques we wrote are in Quicken, but I didn't split
> the transactions into "we pay / kid owes" at the time. That mess goes back
> to 2010. I handled each big expense differently. I'll use a spreadsheet for
> the final report rather than trying to get one from Quicken.

I created a tree of accounts under `Assets:Current Assets` like so:

Reimbursements:Family
Reimbursements:Friends

and then an account for each person under those. I have 5 siblings and we often consolidate large gift buys for our parents among other expenses, so I use these to track who owes me or who I owe. I have an account for each of my parents as well. Sometimes they give me money to buy something for them. I’ll first debit it to cash and credit their reimbursement account, and then debit their account and credit cash when I make the purchase. I don’t involve my expense accounts in this case because it was just a pass-through. Those aren’t *my* expenses. I suppose it could get a little messier involving cards or bank transfers/deposits but the idea is the same. For shared expenses like a large gift, I’ll only expense my portion and the rest goes through the reimbursement accounts.

I suppose you could place these under Liabilities instead, but since the case is usually that my family owes me, I put them under assets. The sign of the balance will tell me which it really is.

Regards,
Adrien