[GNC] Question about transfers

Michael or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at comcast.net
Sat Apr 23 18:07:10 EDT 2022


On 4/22/2022 11:35 PM, john wrote:
> Quicken isn't really an accounting app. Intuit's offering in that space is Quickbooks. That means that how you used Quicken isn't directly transferable to GnuCash. If being able to use a Free Software alternative to Quicken the same way you use Quicken is important to you then have a look at KMyMoney: https://kmymoney.org/ <https://kmymoney.org/>
>
> To accomplish what I think you're trying to do in "real" accounting requires two special accounts: An asset account to collect the money reserved for the payment and a liability account to accumulate the accrual. For your property tax example, suppose you owe 1200 every six month, but you want to record the expense and make a reservation monthly. You'll create two accounts: Assets:Current Assets:Provision for Property Tax and Liabliltues:Current Liabilities:Accrued Property Tax. Every month you'll create a transaction that looks something like:

I think perhaps the real issue is the different types of information.

ONE sort of information is the actual transactions.

But it is not the only sort of information. We also may need 
"prospective" information. I think here the specific question is along 
the lines of "at some future time will a bank account contain enough to 
pay for some expense. Here you are thinking about a a specific actual 
transfer, but it could also be a scheduled transfer (scheduled to take 
place before the check for the expense must be written; when THAT is 
scheduled to happen).

Look at the possibilities of the "cash flow" report.

Michael D Novack

PS:Understand, you are thinking of JUST this one future expense, but you 
want the bank account to contain enough for ANY future expense and 
although you have only one, you could have many.




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