[GNC] split transaction description field length limit

Tue Mar 5 09:52:04 EST 2024

Yes that's why I set up a sole proprietorship with employer ID so I can pay all the payroll taxes, deduct income tax and pay it to the government, pay unemployment, Worker's Comp. insurance etc. I agree with you that it's very important to do those things properly.

I'm using gnucash mostly for my personal books as opposed to the sole proprietorship books which are so simple that we’re doing them in a spreadsheet right now with the exception of the payroll software we use to try to make sure we get all the deductions right.

My sole proprietorship invoices me for the fully burdened cost of each month’s payroll and I reimburse it fully from my personal bank account into the sole proprietorship bank account. It sounds as though my solution will be to set up AR for my sole proprietorship and enter all of the line items into an invoice to myself personally. Up until now I'd been using a simple paper invoice.

Thank you so much for the suggestion.

Tim

From: Alan Johnson <alan at argentwolf.org> 
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2024 11:01 AM
To: timothyscully at yahoo.com; 'David Carlson' <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com>
Cc: 'gnucash-user' <gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org>
Subject: Re: [GNC] split transaction description field length limit

I use GNUCash for tracking rental properties as well. You can create as many expense accounts to track to whatever level of detail is needed.

For example, I have my structure set up as:

Expenses:

Overall R&M

-Property 1 R&M

--Property 1 HVAC

--Property1 General

--Property 1 Electrical

--etc

-Property 2 R&M

--Property 2 HVAC

--Property 2 General

--Property 2 Electrical

--etc

When you run a P&L at the end of the year, it will break out how much was in each expense category, as well as a total for each property. 

Not a CPA or legal advice, but I understand that if you are paying payroll to employees, you still need to pay payroll tax unless they are their own business/1099, in which they should be paying their taxes accordingly.  

You can assign as many line items and expense accounts/line items to the invoices as you need. That's their intended function.  You can also pay line items into an asset or liability account (such as witheld taxes).  

Your handyman should provide you with a bill (or a work order).  

- Fixed property 1's toilet. 1 hr@ $x

You create a vendor in the vendor system (Handyman LLC)

Create an invoice 

Line item - Toilet repair $x Account: Expenses:Property1 R&M:Property1 Plumbing

Line Item - Outlet repair $y Account: Expenses:Property1 R&M:Property1 Electrical

Line Item - Door knob repair $z Account: Expenses: Property2 R&M: Property2:General

Total $A

- Post invoice

Vendors -> Process Payment

Pay Handyman LLC $A from Assets:RentalCheckingAccount with check 1234 

On Mon, 2024-03-04 at 09:46 -0800, timothyscully at yahoo.com <mailto:timothyscully at yahoo.com>  wrote:

I greatly appreciate your suggestions.

I don't think I framed the problem completely. I have several rental properties and before I migrated to GNU cash I was using Quicken to generate “itemized spending” reports from which I could fill out schedule E for each property. When I tried to do the same thing with GNU cash for the transactions associated with, for example maintenance on property 1 or repairs on property 2 I did get a list of transactions but the descriptions of them were so truncated that it wasn't practical for me to verify the correctness of them the way I used to be able to do by just looking down the column of transactions.

I have a tiny sole proprietorship which runs a payroll to pay my part-time handyman and a part-time bookkeeper to avoid nanny tax and Worker's Comp. problems but my sole proprietorship's income is just reimbursements from me as an individual.

If I were to pervert the gnucash vendor bill payment system to detail the work my part-time employees do, would I be able to assign line items on an invoice to different GNU cash expense accounts associated with the different properties people worked on? And would reports generated by GNU cash be able to list the detail for the line items? That's my ultimate goal. I want to be able to generate reports from the gnucash for each calendar year, which also happens to be my tax year, so I can use that information to fill out schedule E for each rental property. I'm comfortable with doing that manually but I have been spoiled by having reports from Quicken that provide the detail associated with each expense account in a form that's easy to double check.

Thank you again for trying to help with my problem.

Tim

From: Alan Johnson <alan at argentwolf.org <mailto:alan at argentwolf.org> > 
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2024 7:43 AM
To: David Carlson <david.carlson.417 at gmail.com <mailto:david.carlson.417 at gmail.com> >
Cc: timothyscully at yahoo.com <mailto:timothyscully at yahoo.com> ; gnucash-user <gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org> >
Subject: Re: [GNC] split transaction description field length limit

You don't have to have 'a business' to use the business features.  You would need to set up an AP and AR account to post the invoices to.  To me, the vendor bill - payment system is the proper way to store the data, rather than kludging the memo fields.  Here is an example of a Costco receipt entered as a bill, then paid with a credit card through the vendor-payments section.  

I think that this would be the best way to handle the handyman payments as requested and job tracking (create various expense accounts). It would also allow for multiple types of payments - e.g. check, credit card, cash all on the same bill if needed.  

On Sun, 2024-03-03 at 21:41 -0600, David Carlson wrote:

Whatever the actual character count limit is for the memo field in a transaction line, I have found the practical limit is what can be printed in reports that show that field.  On the computer screen you cannot directly see anything that is after a linefeed character unless you scroll past that character since the 'window' is one line tall.

I do not use business features so I don't have invoices or vendors.  Another possibility would be to use spreadsheets and refer to them in the document link field.  I don't remember if that is associated with individual lines or to the entire transaction.

On Sun, Mar 3, 2024 at 9:13 PM Alan Johnson via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org> > wrote:

I suggest you put your handyman in as a vendor. Then you can create a bill with long descriptions per item, and then pay the bill with a check. If you want to see what was paid, right click on the payment entry in the register and choose jump to invoice/bill. You can also run a vendor report.

Mar 3, 2024 18:39:49 Tim via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org <mailto:gnucash-user at gnucash.org> >:

> The descriptions that I enter in GNU cash for split items get truncated. Is
> there a way to change this or is this a hard limit?
> 
> 
> 
> To provide some context, I pay a handyman to work on various projects. When
> I write the check to pay him I split the amount among the various projects
> (which correspond to line items on his timesheet)that he worked on to
> allocated it to the different expense accounts associated with those
> projects. I like to enter a fairly long description which includes things
> like the date the work was done, the location, and a brief description of
> what was done but GNU cash truncates it when producing reports or when I go
> back and look at data that I entered earlier.
> 
> 
> 
> Should I be setting up an account for the handyman in which the line items
> of his timesheet would be entered as individual transactions which add up to
> the amount he gets paid? I get the impression that I'm probably trying to
> misuse GNU cash again as I was when I paid my credit card bills with long
> split transactions. I was able to fix that by entering the transactions in
> an account for the credit card and then having a single transaction from my
> bank account to pay off the credit card. I'm not adept enough at accounting,
> to put it mildly, to know if there's something analogous I should be doing
> in this case. Can you explain it in a way that a newbie would understand?
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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