[GNC] Handling personal yet-to-pay bills

Adrien Monteleone adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net
Tue Oct 26 22:44:46 EDT 2021


I use the 'business features' for my personal bills. I don't have to, 
but it works well.

Most of them are duplicated month-to-month, with only minor adjustments 
for particular fees and usage. (such as phone call minutes, utility 
usage, etc.)

The line items rarely if ever change. I just change the amounts, then 
post the bill with its due date.

The only issue I've ever run into was for a bill for pre-paid car 
insurance. The issue is one of recognizing the pre-paid expense on a 
cash vs. accrual basis. (the 'bill' feature uses an accrual method) 
Technically, the expense is not pre-paid until I actually pay it. So 
posting the bill when received like the others is a no-go. I can enter 
the bill when received of course, but can't post it till I physically 
pay it. Thus I have to forgo the 'Bills Due Reminder' for that one bill 
as that feature only works for posted bills. (I use my Reminders.app to 
handle that one for me)

Regards,
Adrien

On 10/16/21 7:59 AM, Mattia Rizzolo wrote:
> Hi people!
> 
> I'm a new gnucash user, starting pretty much now.
> 
> I'll start by saying that despite being a self-employed contractor (and
> such I am making use of some of the business features of gnucash), my
> fiscal position in my country (Italy) doesn't impose me any kind of
> obligation concerning account reports.  As such the focus of my set up
> is really personal, and for now I'm not trying to do things like
> figuring my tax filings from this.  Furthermore I'm allowed to mix "my"
> money and "my business" money, so effectively my assets are mixed.
> 
> I have been looking for a more featureful tool than a crude spreadsheet
> to track all of my assets (and changes to them), that span multiple
> banks and brokerages (and I also believe I do relatively complex/unusual
> things that I'd love to be able to track, but I'll come back at a later
> moment to those).  In fact I've been quite happy to discover that the
> grand total was actually more than what I thought I had at hand :D So
> thank you to the devs for this program that for now made me very
> satisfied! :)
> 
> 
> With that out of the way, today I would like to start with asking the
> wider community how you'd suggest to track "personal bills" that come
> and needs to be paid.  I'm referring to things like utility bills
> (phone, electricity, etc) or tax payments that needs to be done;
> especially those payments that are done manually and don't direct debit
> to the checking account or credit card.
> I'd like to have those kind of things filed in even if the actual
> payment has not been instructed yet, in which case it should count
> toward a liability (since after all it would an A/P).  That would likely
> also help me remind me of the deadlines.
> I'm aware of the "bills" feature (that I already started to use with a
> business vendor, and looks like it's behaving exactly as I'd expect),
> but I'd like to double check with you if as a user in my situation I'm
> expected to use the same "business feature" also for personal things?
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance for your support and sorry for being long-winded!



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