On Fri, Aug 07, 2009 at 08:44:07PM -0600, Travis B. Hartwell wrote: > My wife and I are starting to use coupons and other such discounts to try to > save money. I would like to track how much we are saving by using such > things. The question, then, is how would I form a ledger entry to properly > track it? > > drewr on #ledger suggested that I make coupons an asset. I'm not entirely > sure how to do this right to handle the double-entry accounting. Here's a > thought, but I don't know if it is conceptually clean: > > 2009/08/07 Grocery Store > Expenses:Food $15.00 > Expenses:Food $-5.00 > Assets:Coupons $5.00 > Assets:Coupons $-5.00 > Assets:Checking $-10.00 > > So, at the time of the transaction, the coupon becomes an asset to me -- > since it really isn't an asset until I can use it. This way, the food > expense is correct and the coupons balance out. > > Does this make sense or is there a better way?
I think you're on the right track with the Asset:Coupons account. I'd just "pay" for part of the purchase with a coupon, though, something like this: 2009/08/07 Grocery Store Expenses:Food $15.00 Assets:Checking $-10.00 Assets:Coupons $-5.00 It does depend on what you want your Expenses:Food account to represent -- how much cash you spent on food, or how much worth of food you got. If you want the latter, I'd be inclined to track "discounts received", perhaps: Expenses:Food $-5.00 Income:Discounts Certainly, self-balancing an account seems like a really bad idea, from a double-entry point of view. I'm sure whole books have been written by accountants on the various means of keeping track of discounts and coupons received; perhaps Google could provide... - Matt
