[GNC] Another "multi-account" logical issue - any advice on how to register this?

[Patrick James]

You're getting into an area where you have choices to make. There is nothing particularly wrong with separating the freight, and maybe that's important to you. At the same time, maybe it's not important, and the work is not worth any benefit. Is there any benefit to you to separate the freight? What are you going to do with the information in the future?
 
Also since we're talking about your personal finances where you've indicated you're free to do whatever you want, then if that information is important in the future, then it's almost always easier to separate it on the front end (today, rather than going back and restating all the records).
 
Personally I'd just put the freight and cost of the item together, and then when I sell the specific good (i.e. specific lot identification for inventory), I'd just put the total cost of the item to COGS.
 
There are problems with this:
 
SALE =
Increase "Checking account" by 320.
Decrease "Assets:Material:Item #1" by 300.
Increase "Sales Surplus" by 10.
Increase "Shipping of sold goods" by 10.
 
What I would do for my own personal finances:
 
Increase Cash (debit) = Checking Account = $320
Increase COGS (debit) by $310
Increase Revenue from sales (credit) by $320
Decrease Inventory (credit): "Assets:Material:Item #1" by $310.
 
What I would do for my own personal finances if there were $15 outbound freight:
 
Increase Cash (debit) = Checking Account = $335
Increase COGS (debit) by $310
Increase Revenue from sales (credit) by $320
Decrease Inventory (credit): "Assets:Material:Item #1" by $310.
increase outbound freight expense (credit) by $15
 
Again the above is what I would do with my personal finances. I compute my personal chance of having problems with a few tiny transactions to be very small, $10 here or there, which sum up to near zero over the year.
 
Consult a professional before you get to a significant size with your sales.
 

> On 09/30/2024 10:29 AM PDT Boniforti Flavio <boniforti.f at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>  
> Hi Patrick.
> I'm no business, I just want for my personal finances to be able to see both how much I spent in postage costs/fees (for everything I've ever had to ship/send), as well as how much that cost has added to an item I've bought. This, because I make a simple calculation: when I buy an item I pay for the goods itself *and* the shipping. When I sell the same item (again - no business here, just private sale between private citizens), I'd like to know how much I earned (surplus) or lost, considering the cost as an entity made of the value of the goods and the shipping I had to pay.
> So according to what you explained, I should actually not separate the shipping I paid when buying the item - right? If correct, the transaction would become like this:
>  
> PURCHASE = 
> Increase "Assets:Material:Item #1" of 310.
> Decrease "Checking account" by 310.
>  
> Therefore the sale would be:
>  
> SALE =
> Increase "Checking account" by 320.
> Decrease "Assets:Material:Item #1" by 300.
> Increase "Sales Surplus" by 10.
> Increase "Shipping of sold goods" by 10.
>  
> Can you comment/validate the above?
>  
> TIA,
> F.
>  
>