On May 19, 2014, at 5:04 PM, Martin Michlmayr <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 2014-05-19 * "Booking tithe" >> Assets:US:BofA:Checking -300 USD >> Assets:US:BofA:Checking:Tithe 300 USD > > Now you're creating an account that doesn't exist, which I don't find > ideal. The real problem is that you've created an artificial dependency between Tithe and your Checking account. The good thing about an accounting system is that you can treat your finances as one big pot of money, and Expenses:Groceries doesn't care which account you use to pay for it. Another way to think about this case is that you have a liability, because you owe tithe. But you also have the money still, which is an asset. 2014-05-19 * "Booking tithe" Assets:Tithe 300 USD Liabilities:Tithe -300 USD 2014-05-20 * "Paying tithe" Expenses:Tithe 300 USD Assets:Tithe -300 USD Liabilities:Tithe 300 USD Assets:Checking -300 USD Michlmayr would complain that Assets:Tithe isn't actually an account, but neither are your Expenses, so I'm okay with that. Blais would probably use Virtual:Tithe instead, as would I, as a way to distinguish between "real" assets and "pretend" assets. Although I would argue you do have a very real $300 set aside, it just doesn't happen to live in an account. You could also just use an unbalanced virtual account for Liabilities:Tithe, but then you have to stop and think about what the difference between --real and --virtual is, whereas in this case, it is clear what you mean by "what is my balance excluding Assets:Tithe?" Of course a real accountant would just do this: (accrual based accounting) 2014-05-19 * "Booking tithe" Expenses:Tithe 300 USD Liabilities:Tithe -300 USD 2014-05-20 * "Paying tithe" Liabilities:Tithe 300 USD Assets:Checking -300 USD But this records the expense on a different day than when you actually paid it. That would be a problem if, for example, you live in the US and wanted to claim a tax deduction for the tithe, in which case you must claim the deduction for the year the tithe was actually paid (cash based accounting). Nathan -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
