Re: [SL] DIY Accounting

[Paul W. <pau...@ox...>]

[...]
> I actually do my own household accounting in SQL-Ledger without any 
> problems whatsoever.
> But I may miss some of the showstoppers for non bookkeepers by my lack 
> of ignorance..

Okay, maybe I can supply some of that ignorance!  I'll walk you through
what I think about a simple transaction I'm currently trying to record.

Scenario: A credit card company has sent a statement, with a "minimum
payment" amount and a "must be received by" date.  Since no interest
is currently being being charged by that card company, the intention is
to pay them the minimum payment from a bank account a week before the
"must be received by" date.  The credit card account exists under "long
term liabilities" and the bank account exists under "current assets".

What I actually end up doing in this situation is creating a general
ledger entry showing a credit to the bank account and a debit to the credit
card account for the same amount.  This basically represents the transfer
that has taken place, but it doesn't record anything about the statement
 / request for payment that was sent out.  In a way their statement is 
a bit like an invoice in that they're asking for payment, but it's not
really an invoice because it's not for goods or services; from my point
of view it's an internal transfer between an asset account and a liability
account.

Before I witter on too much, I suppose the question is: in this situation,
is there a better way of representing the payment than via a GL entry?

        Paul