[GNC] Expense accrual

[Gabriele Agliardi]

Hi,

I am considering to start using gnucash for personal accounting, after too
much time spent on Excel!

I like the application a lot, and I really appreciate your efforts.

There is a key feature missing in my opinion: the ability to set the an
accounting date different from the payment date, for regular transactions
(no invoices or complicate stuff, since I'm using it for personal use): for
instance, if I pay the insurance on Dec 28, I would like it to appear in
the reports and to be compared with budget for the next year; in short, I
would like to manually provide a date for the accounting of an expense,
thus overriding the transaction date. Even better, I may how the expense
splits among (potentially multiple) accounting periods: for instance, the
insurance may be spread flat over the year.

I have found the following workarounds:
1. set the accounting date as the transaction date, and move the real
transaction date to the description, or
2. make a set of transactions, like the following: on the payment date, I
move money to a holding account, and then I register the expense from the
holding account on the accounting date; in this scenario, though, I would
like to keep track of the relation between these movements, but I can only
use the description.

Thanks for considering my suggestion!
Gabriele