[GNC] Other Income Account

[Adrien Monteleone]

I’ll add on to Michael’s advice with my own take:

I established a set of Current Asset accounts under a parent called Reimbursements. Each child account belongs to a particular family member or friend with whom I regularly share expenses in both directions—e.g.,

Assets:Current Assets:Reimbursements:Mom
Assets:Current Assets:Reimbursements:Dad

When I spend on their behalf, I expense my portion if any, and their portion gets debited to this asset account.

When they pay me back, I credit their asset account. (reducing what is owed to me, what I have claim to)

If they pay on my behalf, I expense my portion, but instead of paying it out of my cash/checking, I do so with a credit to their Reimbursement account.

Rarely do we actually exchange cash, but this way if we want to settle up, I have the net figures.

I use these also for sharing gift costs amongst my siblings for our parents.

You could do this with liability accounts if you are regularly owing others, I just chose to put it under assets. You can also create both asset and liability for each individual, but then you don’t get the benefit of ’trading’ expenses and quickly seeing a net balance owed by or to a particular individual.

Regards,
Adrien



> On Jan 26, 2019, at 9:06 AM, Michael or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> On 1/26/2019 9:51 AM, Lorrie Laskey wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> My "Other Income" account is showing bank transfers from a fried to my bank
>> account when reimbursing me for, say, shared vacation costs.
>> 
>> It is not income but reimbursement of some sort, isn't it?
>> 
>> Should this be categorized as income?
> No.
> 
> If you are being reimbursed it means you laid out funds for an expense that was shared with somebody else. At THAT time you should have entered a split transaction, say crediting your bank account and debiting "vacation" (expense) and "loaned to friend" (asset). Then when your friend pays you back, debit bank account and credit this loan to you.
> 
> Michael D Novack
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information.
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>