[GNC] How to track part of the total available assets spanning several accounts?

[Peter Azmanov]

Hello all,

New user here. After reading tutorial and searching the web I nearly 
figured out my accounts layout except one problem.

Assume the following accounts structure (partial):

Assets
   - Cash
   - Bank 1
       Account 1
       Savings 1
   - Bank 2
       Account 2
       Savings 2
   - Bank 3
       Account 3
       Savings 3

In my mind I divide total available assets into three parts: savings, 
operational money and surplus money (the amount of money that I can 
spend on extra or non-essential expenses).

While the first part (savings) can be easily tracked via accounts of 
this type, the second and third part aren't that obvious. I can't make a 
sub-account in any of the accounts above because surplus is in all of 
the accounts and I don't care how it's split between those.

Before migrating to GNUCash I used to have a separate text file where I 
tracked surplus money and manually increased this amount by some part of 
profits left after transfering to savings.

I want to track this surplus amount somehow along normal account tracking.

First attempt. I thought about making special equity account "Extra", I 
can increase/decrease this equity via transactions from income/expense 
accounts. This is equivalent to partially closing books each month so 
everything is balanced. But it's not really a solution because I will 
see decreased income and expenses. Maybe this can be fixed by making 
appropriate report? This will further complicate things.

Second attempt. Create two dummy assets with the amount of the surplus 
with different signs. Any change of the surplus will be reflected in the 
transfer between these accounts. They will always have the same amount 
of money but with different signs. This solution isn't very elegant to 
say the least.

Is there an appropriate solution for the problem? Maybe I'm wrong in 
having this problem at all?

Best regards,
Peter