Martin Blais <[email protected]> writes:
[...] > I think you're just not being creative enough with it. Here's an > alternative system that solves your accounting problem without > resorting to virtual accounts: just count the receipts themselves. > > > > option "operating_currency" "RMB" > > 2014-01-01 open Assets:Merchants:C5231 > 2014-01-01 open Income:Salary > 2014-01-01 open Expenses:Food:Restaurant > 2014-01-01 open Assets:Cash > > ;; Amount of receipts I was promised I could gather for payment. > 2014-01-01 open Assets:Receipts:Allowable RECEIPTS > > ;; Amount of receipts I accumulated in envelope, pending to be > ;; submitted to Tax Dodgers Inc. > 2014-01-01 open Assets:Receipts:Pending RECEIPTS > > ;; Amount of cash receipts already submitted to Tax Dodgers, waiting > ;; to be received in cash. > 2014-01-01 open Assets:Receipts:Receivable RMB [...] > You have an account to track how much you've been promised, how much > you've accumulated, how much you've submitted and is receivable in > cash. Your income account will have RMB and RECEIPT units so you can > easily see how much of each composed your compensation. Does this > work? This does work! When I was thinking this through in the beginning, I was put off by proliferating accounts: I felt like I should just have one account for receipts (it's just one value, after all), one account for income, one "cheater" account for receivables, and views on everything else (the fancy footwork with the receipts) should be a function of how I write my reports. You make a persuasive argument with the above, though, and I'll give this some serious thought. Multiple sub-accounts of Assets:Receipts does sound like a good idea. > Here's the ugly: my method above requires you to insert two postings > to the allowable expenses, instead of one, like in your method. [...] This is what I was messing with in another branch of this thread, talking to John about automating transactions using tags/metadata. That doesn't look like it will work in the short term, but maybe it will in the future, and when it does it will simplify things much as your pre-processing scheme would: add a simple tag to "receipt-able" transactions, and the automation does the rest. I'm not likely to dive into beancount any time soon (I'm still re-wrapping my head around plain ledger, after an absence), but I do appreciate the thought and effort that went into your reply. > (Finally, a disclaimer: this email is not to suggest or help you > carry out tax evasion activities; you should probably consult a tax > lawyer about how best to treat those "gifts". This message merely > aims to help solve your counting problem in the context of text-based > bookkeeping software.) Lord knows I wish this wasn't necessary. I console myself, as one often does in China, with the thought that everyone else is doing the same thing. Thanks again, Eric -- --- 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.
