[GNC] Recording medical reimbursements

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 11/6/2023 10:53 PM, Andrew Gross wrote:
> I have various expense accounts for medical expenses. When I receive an
> insurance check, I record these against the medical expense accounts so the
> yearly totals will show (approximately) what I have actually paid over the
> year. Lately, I have been wondering if these reimbursement checks should be
> going to their own account, not necessarily an income account as
> reimbursements aren't income (right?) -- maybe a medical expense contra
> account?

This is the one case I can think of when old fashioned ledger paper 
worked better, an account with a single contra account. That's because 
debits and credits were on separate facing pages (when the ledger was 
open). Essentially every account  had a "contra" in the form of the 
opposite facing page.

My way (with modern software like gnucash) is to use a parent account < 
say "medical expenses" > under which I'd have two children, "paid" and 
"reimbursed". But if reimbursements were very rare, I might just have 
them as credits to a single "medical expenses" account. << if there are 
only one or two, "which one?" or "is a reimbursement missing?" not 
troublesome. But if 50 of them, both questions could arise, so want 
easier to find/see.

Michael D Novack