Again, thank you Adrien for being patient with me. I’m probably getting myself confused too, but I’m starting to get more and more clear on it all. I know I’m definitely weird, and whilst I think the purpose I have is common, the way I use it probably isn’t.
We have some different assumptions going on. Lets start with sub-accounts. Sub-accounts are a great way to do it – if you spend from that sub-account at least most of the time. We have discussed how to handle the splits when you spend from a different account and want to record it against that allocation, so it works, and probably works well (although would be very confusing for beginners to get their head around initially). But instead of using a sub-account to record the money that has been segmented, what if I use a completely separate account? Why? Because I don’t want to touch the balances of my core asset accounts – the ones that correspond to bank accounts or physical cash. Maybe this is my silly desire of mine. There is nothing wrong (or difficult) with adding virtual sub-accounts, because gnucash is really good at handling sub-accounts (with the reconciliation stuff we talked about). So now I need a new location in the hierarchy to store my allocated money – best done as an asset, and since it isn’t a sub-account, it needs to be balanced with another account (also best done as an asset). We’ll get to your example in a minute. Assumption 2: That I only (or mainly) segment cash when I receive it. Probably true for most people, and I’m glad you mentioned it because I should use that for most of the examples when I write something up for the tutorials and concepts guide. That isn’t how I work. I plan everything out in advance to make sure I have the cash flow. I allocate to various purposes on the first day of the month, rather than allocating by pay. I do this so that I get a regular and measureable allocation to things I want to spend on (restaurants & Cafes, spending money, etc). I can afford to do this because I am very (very very very) good with sticking to a budget and savings in general. So I just make sure I have more money in my account than I plan to spend that month (transferring the rest away to investments or to reduce my loans), and I have no cashflow problems. So for me, I want to do an allocation on the start of every month, that doesn’t correspond to income. No real problem. Still, lets carry on with your example of allocating out of pay: If, rather than a sub-account, I use a separate asset account then there is no balancing Cr to an asset to increase the allocation. In your example, you had a balancing Cr on the parent when you allocated the money. So, we receive a $1000 pay check, and want to allocate $500 to the four accounts: Cr Income: Salary $1000 Dr Asset:Current:Checking $1000 Cr Asset:Current:AllocatedCash $500 Dr. Assets:Allocated:Vacation $250 Dr. Assets:Allocated:Insurance $150 Dr. Assets:Allocated:Dining $ 50 Dr. Assets:Allocated:Coffee&Tea $ 50 So at the end of this, the income and Checking accounts haven’t been touched by the allocation process. They are the same as they would be if we didn’t use any allocation, $1000 each and balanced. The “Asset:Current:Allocated Cash” account that started at $0 has been reduced by $500, and now is negative. Since this is a current asset, I can see in the current assets total exactly how much total money I have that can be spent. The negative shows me that I have $500 allocated away, so I shouldn’t spend the full $1000 in Checking. The Assets:Allocated accounts all have the amounts that can be allocated. Now I want to go out to lunch and spend $20 out of checking: Dr. Expenses:Dining $20 Cr. Assets:Current:Checking:Dining $20 Cr Assets:Allocated:Dining $20 Dr Assets:Current:AllocatedCash $20 So after this transaction, the amounts in checking and the expense are as you’d expect (again, no change from if you didn’t use allocations). The Current assets have been increased – become less negative, because I have $20 less now allocated to Dining out. So there is now less money that I am telling myself “can’t be spent”, but of course I haven’t gained more cash to spend – this gain is offset by the reduce in cash from actually spending it. My amount of cash allocated to Dining has been Dr (reduced) by $20 as you expect. So I am left with $980 in my checking, $30 in my Allocated:Dining, -$480 in my overall AllocatedCash. You are probably thinking “That is stupid. Why bother?”. You’re right – it is probably extra entries for little benefit. Hence why I’m going to try it for a few weeks before recommending before/against it in the tutorials and concepts guide and/or attempting/requesting features in GNUCash to support it. The main advantage here is that it separates the allocation of money from the account you are going to spend it from. The spending transaction would be the same size and type if I was using a sub-account and didn’t spend from that sub account: Dr Expenses:Dining $20 Cr Assets:MyCash $20 Cr Assets:Checking:Dining $20 Dr Assets:Checking $20 So if I (foolishly) chose a sub-account for allocation that I never spent from, doing it the separated way is no extra work – still similar four splits. But as you say, if you use a sub-account and spend from it most of the time, the messy four line transaction becomes a simple Cr Checking:Dining $20 Dr Expenses:Dining $20 Does this make sense? Thanks and regards, Matt From: Adrien Monteleone<mailto:adrien.montele...@gmail.com> Sent: Tuesday, 30 January 2018 6:45 PM To: gnucash-user@gnucash.org<mailto:gnucash-user@gnucash.org> Subject: Re: Subaccounts [WAS Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets] Matt, You lost me again. I don’t understand why you’d have a negative 'segmented spending money' asset. You receive a paycheck, say $1000. You earmark 50% of that into various sub-accounts. You still have $1000. There’s no negative balance on any asset account. Perhaps your checking account holds $500 of that money, and each of four sub-accounts hold $250, $150, $50 & $50 respectively. That all adds up to $1000. The act of earmarking funds moves you from one account with a single positive $1000 balance to 5 accounts totaling a positive $1000 balance NONE of which are negative. Where’s the ‘negative segmented money account?’ Please describe with debits and credits. I don’t see it. What I see is this: Receipt of money with segregation: Dr. Assets:Checking $500 Dr. Assets:Checking:Vacation $250 Dr. Assets:Checking:Insurance $150 Dr. Assets:Checking:Dining $ 50 Dr. Assets:Checking:Coffee&Tea $ 50 Cr. Income:Salary $1000 When you go out for lunch I see this: Dr. Expenses:Dining $20 Cr. Assets:Checking:Dining $20 How does recording an expense INCREASE the allocated cash for Dining as you describe? (making it less negative) How was it negative in the first place? What transaction did you record to make it so? Note, for an asset to be ‘negative’ it has to have a ‘credit’ balance, that is, credits have to be greater than debits. Making an asset account ‘less negative’ is a debit transaction. (since asset accounts are usually debit positive balanced) Debits don’t decrease an asset, they increase it. Spending money never gives you more to spend, it means you have less. Spending money is always (eventually) a credit to assets, never a debit. I can’t see any scenario where that above example of going out for lunch looks like this: Dr. Expenses:Dining $20 Dr. Assets:Checking:Dining $20 Cr. ???? $40 If that would even begin to make any sense why $40 is moving somewhere instead of just $20. Note, doing this: Dr. Assets:Checking:Dining $20 Cr. Expenses:Dining $20 Is an incorrect transaction if you SPENT the money. (as opposed to receiving a refund, or correcting a prior error) Crediting an expense is a refund/reversing condition, not a normal expenditure. When you record the receipt of money, that goes to an income/revenue account, split with the physical asset account for the form you received the payment in. Generally, this will be a credit to ‘income’ and a debit to ‘cash.’ Where and how do you record the receipt of money as a credit to an asset instead and how does that balance against your credit to your income account? i.e.— Dr. ???? $1000 Cr. Income:Salary $1000 Cr. Assets:????? ????? Regards, Adrien > On Jan 29, 2018, at 11:25 PM, Matt Graham <matt_graham2...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > Ah, true. I guess this is why I favored "triggered transactions " rather than > "template transactions". > > I want a transaction involving expense account "spending money" to > automatically add two more splits to reduce the asset account "segmented > spending money" balanced by increasing the value of "allocated cash" asset > acct (increase = make it less negative). > > For saving up for something expensive, I would still set up the above, but I > would need to manually change the numbers if I wanted to return the > allocation to zero. > > So when I enter: > > Cr account I used to pay insurance 1150 > Dr expense account for insurance (with the trigger attached) 1150 > > I would want gnucash to automatically add the splits > > Cr account I am using to segment insurance money 1150 > Dr account showing allocated cash 1150. > > I would the (during my reconciling/budget review) need to amend that > transaction (or create a new one to return the insurance allocation to zero. > > For many of my other money allocations (eg restaurants/cafe) I wouldnt change > it - underspending means the money is available for later. > > Am I understanding you right? > > > Thanks and regards, > Matt > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepf...@dialup4less.com> > Date: 30/1/18 09:31 (GMT+10:00) > To: Matt Graham <matt_graham2...@hotmail.com> > Cc: gnucash-user@gnucash.org > Subject: Re: Subaccounts [WAS Re: Future allocated money vs Budgets] > > On 1/28/2018 8:11 PM, Matt Graham wrote: > ........ When you look at what liabilities really are, Adrien and I concluded > on this thread that this situation (segmenting money for future) is really > using a separate asset account. After all - creating a liability INCREASES > your cash available. ....... > Yes, the problem precisely, we aren't assigning the same meaning to > "available" and "liability" > > But your example of what you would like to see: > > Template transactions (I'd probably call them "Triggerred transactions", but > it doesn'tmatter) sound awesome. As someone else highlighted, there are > implementation difficulties to consider, but I dont think that it would be > too onerous. > > In terms of spending from another account but recording against a > sub-account, its easy: > Dr Exp whatever account > Cr Cash I pay for something awesome > Dr Parent account the amount I paid > Cr sub-account the amount I paid > > SPECIAL CASE of a GENERAL requirement. The special case might be easy to > implement BUT in general the amounts are NOT going to be the same. > > This is actually a fairly common situation for me, say one of the > organizations SELLS a tee shirt (fundraising, but tee shirts might also be > being given away to volunteers). > Db Cash > Cr Sales > Db Cost of goods sold > Cr Tee shirt inventory > << the shirts might be being sold for $20 but cost the organization $7 >> > > Or, and though this is common with our restricted funds (not exactly > matching) I will give an example precisely for your situation. You socked > away into this reserve $100/mo toward the annual renewal of your car > insurance based on your ESTIMATE of what that annual bill will be. But when > the bill arrives it is for $1150 or $1250. In both cases you pay the bill and > release the restriction, yes? << in one case, you had more in the fund than > needed but it still can be released to general purposes, in the other you > used all of the fund AND had to add some general funds >> > > Michael D Novack > > > > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.gnucash.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fgnucash-user&data=02%7C01%7C%7C4d79b0e9cbe140b70b2508d567b56ea1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636528951303115925&sdata=5xIiVxNJ%2BBoVTjzmPnVKQ90F6nsrNjVZJybCI%2FbkjfM%3D&reserved=0 > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.gnucash.org%2Fwiki%2FMailing_Lists&data=02%7C01%7C%7C4d79b0e9cbe140b70b2508d567b56ea1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636528951303115925&sdata=od4n2CPRwGuMriY8bgeoHyYaeSYksup9fjYvgtx98MI%3D&reserved=0 > for more information. > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. Regards, Adrien _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flists.gnucash.org%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Fgnucash-user&data=02%7C01%7C%7C4d79b0e9cbe140b70b2508d567b56ea1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636528951303115925&sdata=5xIiVxNJ%2BBoVTjzmPnVKQ90F6nsrNjVZJybCI%2FbkjfM%3D&reserved=0 If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwiki.gnucash.org%2Fwiki%2FMailing_Lists&data=02%7C01%7C%7C4d79b0e9cbe140b70b2508d567b56ea1%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636528951303115925&sdata=od4n2CPRwGuMriY8bgeoHyYaeSYksup9fjYvgtx98MI%3D&reserved=0 for more information. ----- 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 To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
