Thanks, Red. Apologies for the delayed response, I had a busy week and I wanted to try your suggestion first, looking at Fava to see what were the consequences of using Asset accounts. To be fair, I had already tried them in the past but: - I had not used accounts under the same hierarchy (`Asset:Partner`), so contributions and expenses felt somewhat disconnected - it felt weird because it didn't seem to satisfy the idea of an Asset account as "something I have" (that's still true for Assets:Partner:Expenses ).
>From what I can see, though, your suggestion: - ensures Net Worth is correct - allows me to keep looking at my own slice of the expenses - allows me to look at aggregate (shared) expenses ...so I think I can live with the slight conceptual weirdness of the partner expenses "asset"! Thanks again, 😌 Angelo On Monday, 3 July 2023 at 19:55:18 UTC+1 Red S wrote: > I would personally use an Assets:Partner account: > Assets:Partner:Contributions ; instead of Equity:PartnerContributions > Assets:Partner:Expenses ; instead of Equity:PartnerExpenses > > This: > > - makes it trivial to query your partner’s contributions and expenses > (they’re just the accounts above) > - Optionally, you could add ` Assets:Partner:Expenses:Phone`, ` > Assets:Partner:Expenses:Utilities` > etc. > - the top-level account (Assets:Partner) trivially tells you if your > partner owes you, or you owe her, or you’re even at any point in time > (positive/negative/zero balance) > - in addition, this is factored into your own Assets automatically, as > it should. I.e., if your partner owes you 100 GBP, it is automatically a > part of your own assets, as it should be > > ​ > > > > On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 7:09:14 AM UTC-7 [email protected] wrote: > >> Hi, everyone; apologies in advance for the wall of text. >> >> So, I have a fairly common use case (sharing expenses with my partner), >> and I know it's been discussed before, but there are still a couple of >> things I'm not sure about. I realise there may be different ways of going >> about it (one may be to use the autobean.share >> <https://github.com/SEIAROTg/autobean/tree/master/autobean/share> >> plugin, but I'm wary of adding plugin-specific metadata for now). >> >> *Previous relevant threads, for reference* >> - Loosely tracking shared expenses between partners >> <https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/p05e3hMqpJY/m/GJxoI33sBAAJ> >> (Dec 17) >> - Expenses paid with external account >> <https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/USNXP2vIWHY/m/dMZdeUXrCQAJ> >> (Jun 20) >> - Payees, subaccounts, channels >> <https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/vefi9DzrU4s/m/tB2nsseJAgAJ> >> (Jul 22) >> - Sharing household expenses >> <https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/K8SSrCVikeY/m/bO0Aa1ONAQAJ> >> (Aug 22) >> >> *My scenario* >> - I use Beancount, my partner doesn't (meaning she doesn't care for the >> same level of granularity in expense accounts, but she may be interested in >> coarser aggregates). >> - We have a joint bank account which we use for shared expenses. >> - We're adding a fixed amount to said account each month. >> - We split shared expenses (and, consequently, deposits to the joint >> account) roughly in proportion to our relative income, so it's not 50/50. >> - The bank where the joint account is (Monzo) has a decent API, so I can >> get a JSON dump of all transactions, or a delta. >> - I have an importer for our joint account which can already do the math >> and prorate a posting's amount accordingly. I suppose it would be easy to >> turn the prorating part into a plugin instead, in case that made more sense. >> - I still review transactions manually, to fix payees and expense >> categories as required. >> >> >> *Sample ledger* >> Here's a public gist >> <https://gist.github.com/tatablack/2a2b733ec5979ad052721f264492585f> >> with a sample ledger. In this example I am using Equity accounts for both >> my partner's deposits and her share of expenses from the joint account; >> e.g.: >> >> 2023-06-01 * "My partner" "June top-up: 40% of £2000" >> Equity:PartnerContributions -800.00 GBP >> Assets:UK:SharedBank:Joint >> >> 2023-06-12 * "Electricity" "" >> Expenses:Bills:Electricity 0.60 * 150.00 GBP >> Assets:UK:SharedBank:Joint -150.00 GBP >> Equity:PartnerExpenses >> >> *Solved problems* >> My goals include being able to build reports showing my own expenses as >> well as an aggregate of our shared ones (e.g. "how much are OUR rent + >> bills + subscriptions each month?"). Red's suggestion >> <https://groups.google.com/g/beancount/c/K8SSrCVikeY/m/P8HzhLhHAwAJ> to >> use BQL's FINDFIRST and other_accounts works well for this. >> >> *Questions* >> 1. Should I consider my partner's monthly deposits to our joint account >> as "Income" instead? It doesn't feel right, because I can't really dispose >> of that money other than for sharing expenses, but mainly because I don't >> want to track the equivalent outgoing transactions under my own "Expenses" >> hierarchy. >> >> 2. Looking at the definitions of the various types of account in the >> docs, I can't figure out what type of account my partner's share of >> expenses should be booked to—"Equity" feels a bit of a hack. >> >> "Equity" should, according to the docs, be used for accounts that hold a >> "summary of the net income implied by all the past activity". In my head, I >> could apply this to the account used to deposit money into the joint >> account, but not to the one for expenses. >> >> Any other suggestions? Anything obvious I'm missing? >> >> Thanks in advance! >> >> *Angelo* >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/612754ac-2602-47c7-8185-72c83a97d5b5n%40googlegroups.com.
