[GNC] accounts setup (how to duplicate same payment in two expense accounts)

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Tue Jan 28 21:30:10 EST 2020


I’m not sure how you’re ending up with negative, red, amounts in your registers.

Entering a negative in either the debit or credit column will simply swap it to the other column as a positive when you tab through or commit the transaction. And it will appear this way when viewing the transaction later.

Now, you can have ’negative & red’ balances on the Accounts tab and in reports. Those would indicate either a ‘credit balance’ condition for assets and expenses or if you are using the ‘reverse balance accounts’, a ‘contra’ balance for liabilities, income and equity. (technically a debit balance in this case as those are normally credit balances) Without ‘reverse balancing accounts’, liabilities, income and equity are normally displayed as ’negative’ balances. Otherwise, it is not ’normal’ to have negative balances for any regular account.

As for what you’re doing with your virtual budgeting accounts, I did the same some time ago in an attempt to mimic an ‘envelope method’ but it got way too messy too fast. If you can maintain it, more power to you.

Regards,
Adrien

> On Jan 28, 2020 w5d28, at 7:10 PM, Peter West <pbw at pbw.id.au> wrote:
> 
> Hi Adrian,
> 
> What I suggested was negative credits.
> 
> I have sometimes accidentally ended up with similar situations when I have made a mistake with a complex split. With my current setup, the negative amounts show up in red with a minus sign.
> 
> However, if other vacation expenses were not also being pre-allocated to non-vacation accounts, you would end up with a hotch-potch.
> 
> I use sub-accounts to track my budget allocations. From every incoming payment, I divert various budgetary amounts to a single bank account, and keep track of how much I have allocated for various future expenses by means of sub-accounts of that single bank account. That can get a bit confusing.
> 
> Peter



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