I had a question about being able to credit expense accounts. Since I'm not an accountant, I'll just give an example.
I have an Internet account which I split among my roommates. I pay the bill and then they pay a fixed amount per month as their shares. I currently have an expense account "Internet" and an income account "Internet." How can I most effectively combine these? I could do this with a prepaid account but I don't actually want to put the money in another place or reserve it...I just want to be able to quickly see if the Internet connection was profitable including equipment expenses, etc...
The example is trivial but would help me understand a more complicated situation.
Thanks!
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I would recommend having one account and at least 2 different budget categories: an account labeled Internet (probably some sort of Debit, perhaps of type Cash or Savings, depending on how your roomies give you the money. For the purposes of this example, we'll call it 'Available Internet Funds'.
You would then have two separate Budget Categories, called Internet Income and Internet Expenses. When budgeting, you would put in how much you expect to get / spend (for instance, if you have 4 room mates, and each gives you $20, put $80 for the Internet Income; if your ISP charges $35 / month, put that as the amount for the Internet Expenses category. The thing to remember is that Budget Categories and their associated budgeted amounts are just guesses: you may go over your bandwidth limit, and the ISP will charge you $45. All this means is that you will have gone $10 over budget, and that category will be flagged in your reports section.)
At the beginning of the month, when your room mates give you money, you would enter each as a transaction, from 'Internet Income' to 'Available Internet Funds'. When you pay the ISP, buy hardware, etc, you would enter that as a transaction from 'Available Internet Funds' to 'Internet Expeses'.
I think that the confusion you are experiencing is due to the definitions of Accounts vs. Budget Categories. Basically, an Account is a collection of funds which you either own (debit accounts) or owe (credit accounts). You can either debit or credit accounts, depending on of the transaction lists the account in the 'to' or the 'from' position.
Budget Categories, on the other hand, are simply labels for income and expenses. They are logical entities, and do not represent funds which you have; instead, they are simply labels for helping keep track of your expenses. They are solely for convenience; you could have only two (Income and Expense), and then categorize all transactions by their description. (This is not recommended, as it would make it harder to see where your funds are going, but it is possible. I use it to illustrate how they work).
You can look at the thread 'Understanding Budget and Accounts better' in this forum for more information - here I explain in greater detail what each is, and how to use it. See my reply at https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3998709.
As far as quickly seeing if your Internet account is profitable or not, that is a little harder. In the current setup, there are no reports to show you the difference between two selected accounts. If you know any Java programming, this would be an excellent plugin to write 8-) You could base it very heavily off of the existing reports, and simply have the user select beforehand which accounts they want to compare. If you do end up making such a plugin, feel free to send a copy to me, and I'd put it in the Plugins section for others to enjoy.
Hope this helps; let me know if you have further questions. You could probably use a prepaid account for this as well, but that's beyond the scope of this message.
Cheers
--Wyatt
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I had a question about being able to credit expense accounts. Since I'm not an accountant, I'll just give an example.
I have an Internet account which I split among my roommates. I pay the bill and then they pay a fixed amount per month as their shares. I currently have an expense account "Internet" and an income account "Internet." How can I most effectively combine these? I could do this with a prepaid account but I don't actually want to put the money in another place or reserve it...I just want to be able to quickly see if the Internet connection was profitable including equipment expenses, etc...
The example is trivial but would help me understand a more complicated situation.
Thanks!
I would recommend having one account and at least 2 different budget categories: an account labeled Internet (probably some sort of Debit, perhaps of type Cash or Savings, depending on how your roomies give you the money. For the purposes of this example, we'll call it 'Available Internet Funds'.
You would then have two separate Budget Categories, called Internet Income and Internet Expenses. When budgeting, you would put in how much you expect to get / spend (for instance, if you have 4 room mates, and each gives you $20, put $80 for the Internet Income; if your ISP charges $35 / month, put that as the amount for the Internet Expenses category. The thing to remember is that Budget Categories and their associated budgeted amounts are just guesses: you may go over your bandwidth limit, and the ISP will charge you $45. All this means is that you will have gone $10 over budget, and that category will be flagged in your reports section.)
At the beginning of the month, when your room mates give you money, you would enter each as a transaction, from 'Internet Income' to 'Available Internet Funds'. When you pay the ISP, buy hardware, etc, you would enter that as a transaction from 'Available Internet Funds' to 'Internet Expeses'.
I think that the confusion you are experiencing is due to the definitions of Accounts vs. Budget Categories. Basically, an Account is a collection of funds which you either own (debit accounts) or owe (credit accounts). You can either debit or credit accounts, depending on of the transaction lists the account in the 'to' or the 'from' position.
Budget Categories, on the other hand, are simply labels for income and expenses. They are logical entities, and do not represent funds which you have; instead, they are simply labels for helping keep track of your expenses. They are solely for convenience; you could have only two (Income and Expense), and then categorize all transactions by their description. (This is not recommended, as it would make it harder to see where your funds are going, but it is possible. I use it to illustrate how they work).
You can look at the thread 'Understanding Budget and Accounts better' in this forum for more information - here I explain in greater detail what each is, and how to use it. See my reply at https://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=3998709.
As far as quickly seeing if your Internet account is profitable or not, that is a little harder. In the current setup, there are no reports to show you the difference between two selected accounts. If you know any Java programming, this would be an excellent plugin to write 8-) You could base it very heavily off of the existing reports, and simply have the user select beforehand which accounts they want to compare. If you do end up making such a plugin, feel free to send a copy to me, and I'd put it in the Plugins section for others to enjoy.
Hope this helps; let me know if you have further questions. You could probably use a prepaid account for this as well, but that's beyond the scope of this message.
Cheers
--Wyatt