Adrien, I suggest that you may need to shift your point of view in order to resolve this. Disclaimer: I am not an accountant.,
My experience has been that you should not lose sight of the primary purpose of an accounting system: It is there to provide the information you need to make financial decisions. GAAP, satisfying taxing authorities, surviving audits, etc. are secondary. Why do you want this prepaid expense to show in your reports? Is it a net worth issue? An underlying cash flow issue? Something else? When is it important that it show in your balance sheet or other report? When is it important to show the obligation to pay the bill when it arrives? The answers to these questions should help you determine what you really need. Then look for an implementation that satisfies these primary conditions and does not cause secondary problems. Dale On Dec 15, 2017 11:23 AM, "John Ralls" <jra...@ceridwen.us> wrote: > > > > On Dec 15, 2017, at 7:51 AM, Derek Atkins <warl...@mit.edu> wrote: > > > > Adrien, > > > > Adrien Monteleone <adrien.montele...@gmail.com> writes: > > > >> Sorry, allow me to rephrase, when do I acquire the pre-paid expense > ASSET? > > > > Can you please explain what you mean by a "pre-paid expense asset"? Is > > it an Expense? Or is it an Asset? > > > > Could you give a concrete example of something that is a "pre-paid > > expense asset"? > > > > Sorry for being dense, but I still don't grok what you're trying to do > > or how this is mapping into a real-world transaction. > > Suppose you have an insurance policy that lets you either pay monthly or > for a whole year, with the latter getting a 10% discount, and that even if > you pay for the whole year you can cancel and get a pro-rata refund. The > annual pre-payment is booked as an asset called "pre-paid expense". Each > month you credit 1/12 of the annual payment to expenses:insurance. If 3 > months in you cancel the policy, the refund creates a transfer transaction > back to the bank account. > > Regards, > John Ralls > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > 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. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org 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.
