Scheduled transaction formulae & splitting joint bills

ian at caption.org ian at caption.org
Tue Apr 29 07:15:41 EDT 2008


Hi,
 
I've recently started using GnuCash, and having put in most of my account
data, I'm starting to get to grips with automating regular payments, and
getting it to calculate various things for me.  I have a couple of questions
I hope someone can help me with.
 
1) I pay my credit card bills in full every month.  Is it possible to
schedule a transaction that pays off the complete balance that was on the
card at a given date?  (i.e. my monthly credit card bill is calculated on
the 15th of the month; my payment of that figure is paid by direct debit on
the 1st of the following month.  Any transactions after the 15th go on the
next month's bill, and will not be paid.  I enter the expenses in the credit
card account, so it has an accurate daily balance.)
 
2) My partner and I share the cost of bills, but I pay them all.  I want a
method of working out how much she owes me.  Previously I have used a
spreadsheet that has summed all the joint payments, multiplied it by a ratio
(we share the expenses in proportion to our salaries) and deducted any
payments made to me.  Obviously, in GnuCash I want an Asset account of money
owed to me, but I don't want the hassle of splitting every single expense so
that (~)half goes in to the expense account and half to the asset account -
in particular, this would be really awkward for the mortgage, where I want
to be able to see the full balance and not just my portion of it, and I
don't want the money she owes me to include her entire portion of the
mortgage, just her portion of everything paid in a given month.  What I've
tried is to create a split on the payments where, for example:
 
£20 withdrawal from bank account
£20 deposit to Gas expense
£10 deposit to Asset:Money owed to me
£10 withdrawal from ?
 
Obviously, the money for that has to come from somewhere, otherwise it just
goes in to Imbalance.  I could create a new Income for this, and would be
happy to do so if necessary, but I was hoping there was a better way.
Additionally, is there a way of storing the ratio used in this calculation,
so I could use it in a formula?  Is there a way, in fact, of using a formula
to automatically calculate that share (e.g. 50% of x where x is the
transaction above)?  If I can store that ratio, can I store it such that I
can change it when it needs changing without it affecting previous
transactions?
 
Ian


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