[GNC] Handling medical bills

[G R Hewitt]

The first thing I would do is to settle on a naming convention for the data
coming in
such as date will be Date, invoice number or reference would be Reference,
if there are any references to the Medic and third party that should match,
they would be X-Ref;
that sort of thing, along with charges, treatments etc - anything that will
be useful in keeping track easily - such as entered into Gnucash and date.
Then I would build this in a spreadsheet of choice, using different sheets
in the same workbook.
When you have all your 'ducks in a row' only then would I enter the bills
into Gnucash.
My reasoning is that Gnucash is first and foremost an accounting program,
not a database (yes, I know it uses one (unless you use xlm) per se,
and with all the inputting and faffing about it seems you have to do errors
will likely happen.
It is far easier to manipulate a spreadsheet than Gnucash.

That's my sixpence worth.

G

On Thu, 24 Jul 2025 at 18:05, Ed Greenberg <edg at greenberg.org> wrote:

> I'm drowning in my aged parents medical bills. Their bills get sent to
> Medicare for payment, then to a third party insurance company, then to me
> for a co-payment.
>
> Mostly I'm trying to make sure that I don't pay anything that isn't
> represented by a finalized explanation of benefits (EOB), and that I don't
> pay anything twice.
>
> Here's what I'm doing, and I wonder if anyone is doing similar and can
> weigh in with a better process.
>
> Once a month, Medicare produces an EOB, and on some irregular schedule, the
> third party insurance produces an EOB.
>
> Sometimes the provider bills me before the EOBs show up and sometimes
> after.  The only way to know what is a duplicate is by the provider name
> coupled with the date of service.
>
> When by process EOBs, I create incoming accounts payable records. This
> gives me an easy record of what has come in before. When I receive bills
> from providers I try to match them up with what exists in gnucash. If I
> can't, and I can't find an EOB on the various websites, I create an
> incoming accounts payable record.
>
> If I have all the ducks in a row as indicated by the accounts payable
> record, the "bill," then I can pay the bill.
>
> This is a pretty new process for me, and if anybody has any suggestions on
> how to enhance it, I would be interested in hearing of it.
>
> Ed Greenberg
> _______________________________________________
> gnucash-user mailing list
> gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe:
> https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user
> -----
> Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
>