I think you want a liability account for the estate, and a corresponding
personal asset.
So something like:
2023-07-27 Transfer advance to Estate account
Assets:Estate:Checking:MyBank $100
Liabilities:Estate:Advances -$100
Assets:Loans:Advances-to-Estate $100
Assets:Checking:MyBank
2023-07-28 Purchase on behalf of Estate
Expenses:Estate:Utilities:Electricity $75
Liabilities:Estate:Advances -$75
Assets:Loans:Advances-to-Estate $75
Assets:Checking:MyBank
and then your balance looks like:
$100 Assets
$-175 Checking:MyBank
$100 Estate:Checking:MyBank
$175 Loans:Advances-to-Estate
$75 Expenses:Estate:Utilities:Electricity
$-175 Liabilities:Estate:Advances
So you have -$175 in your account (I started with a zero balance); the estate
account has $100 in it (again, zero starting balance), but you're entitled to
$175 back from the estate (Assets:Loans:Advances-to-Estate) and the estate has
an account showing what it owes back to you (Liabilities:Estate:Advances).
You can then pay yourself back with a transaction like:
2023-07-28 Reimburse Pete
Assets:Estate:Checking:MyBank -$100
Liabilities:Estate:Advances $100
Assets:Loans:Advances-to-Estate -$100
Assets:Checking:MyBank ; implicitly +$100
In my experience estates tend to be separate accounting entities from your
personal accounts, so I would even consider structuring those accounts as
Estate:Assets:Checking:MyBank, Estate:Liabilities:Advances-to-Pete etc, just to
make the distinction super obvious.
mjec
On Thu, Jul 27, 2023, at 15:42, Pete Kelly wrote:
> Hi all, new Ledger user, and I'm handling the estate of a family member. To
> pay some of the bills I'm advancing the estate money from my own account. I'd
> like to keep track of each advance, but I'm not sure how to assign these
> transactions to the correct accounts. I've been using 'Estate' and 'Advance'
> to keep track.
>
> Here's an example of a transfer from one account to another:
>
> 2023-07-27 Transfer
> Assets:Estate:Checking:MyBank $100 ; receiving account
> Assets:Checking:MyBank
>
> Here's a purchase:
>
> 2023-07-27 Eversource
> Expenses:Advance:Estate:Utilities:Electricity. $75.00
> Assets:Checking:MyBank
>
> Can anybody suggest how to do this correctly? Maybe I should use tags instead?
>
> Thanks for any help,
> Pete
>
>
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