[GNC] Account structure for tracking trip expenses

[Adrien Monteleone]

Peter,

In line with David's suggestion of using the Action field, you can 
create your own 'tag' system. Your tags can be placed in Description, 
Notes (need 2nd line mode to view) Action or Memo fields. You can 
designate tags with whatever symbol you like, such as '#' or '@' or no 
symbol at all.

When you are ready to run a report for anything using a tag, run the 
Transaction Report and use the Filter tab in Options to specify the tag 
you want to include. You can also get fancy with Regular Expressions if 
you like.

At present, the only major disadvantage to this approach is that the 
P&L/Income Statement does not allow the full breadth of filtering 
options that the Transaction Report does, so it takes more work to get 
that type of 'net revenue/income' result based on a subset of 
transactions matching a tag. (requires specially crafted Transaction 
report exported and further manipulated in a spreadsheet) Having 
separate accounts for such tracking makes P&L/Income Statement type 
reporting easy. And if you make those special accounts children of the 
'regular' corresponding accounts, their balances can be set to 'roll-up' 
into their parents.

The advantage to this 'custom tag' approach is that you don't have to 
create special accounts that might be for one-off events or projects, 
and the transactions are automatically included in the 'regular' 
accounts, because they are already assigned to them. Plus, your CoA is a 
bit less cluttered. Also note, this doesn't require any special 'system' 
of tags. Simply putting a common word or phrase in say the 'Notes'  or 
'Memo' field, is sufficient to create a report filter.

Regards,
Adrien

On 11/18/22 11:01 PM, David T. via gnucash-user wrote:
> This question has a long history (the earliest I've seen is from 2001, https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2001-October/002612.html). If you Google "cost center site:lists.gnucash.org/pipermail", you can find a number of these.
> 
> Interestingly, that early thread neatly (if tersely) summarizes your options: create separate accounts for each center (with the acknowledged overhead that this approach entails), or use the Action field to insert codes that can be used to create necessary reports.
> 
> ⁣David T. ​
> 
> On Nov 19, 2022, 5:31 AM, at 5:31 AM, Peter West <pbw at pbw.id.au> wrote:
>> I would like to have the trip fuel expenses, for example, also
>> accumulate into the overall fuel expenses if possible.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>>> On 19 Nov 2022, at 12:24 pm, Peter West <pbw at pbw.id.au> wrote:
>>>
>>> How do folks here keep track of expenses for a particular event? For
>> example, a road trip with fuel, food and accommodation expenses, where
>> I have a CoA which has accounts for “normal” fuel, food and
>> accommodation?