Hi Daniel I’ve understood that you want to allocate some of your bank balance(s) to savings goal(s) and then have a "balance available" after setting the money aside. It is a question I’ve asked myself if the past and you prompted me to work out how I could to do it.
I’m no Gnucash expert and I don’t know if there’s a non double entry solution, but could suggest a reasonably simple double entry approach that would work for my setup and might go some of the way towards what you’re looking for. In Assets I have an account Bank which I use as a parent for a couple of bank accounts. For each bank account where I wanted to set something aside, I could create a new liability type account underneath the bank account called “Allocated for savings goals” or something. Also within the Bank parent I could create an asset account "Savings goals". If I had more than one goal I could make that a parent and create sub accounts to track them. Then I’d use double entry/scheduled transactions to make the provisions/set aside money in line with my goals in the new accounts. These new accounts are “memo” accounts and entries would not be mixed with real entries. When the money is actually used there’d be a real entry reflecting the cash flow transaction and I’d need to manually clear the memo accounts with reversing entries. Looking at the accounts list: - my Bank parent account would show the total amount I have in my bank accounts - the “Savings goals” account(s) would show how much of the real balance is set aside for the goals(s) - the real bank accounts would show the net amount available after setting money aside - the sub account “Allocated for savings goals” accounts beneath my real bank accounts So as an example, if I have 1000 in a real bank account, the account in the accounts list might show as 100 which is the available balance, then the sub account would show as 900 which is how much I’ve set aside. Because I’m not touching the transactions in the real bank accounts, when I open them I’d see the true balance and reconciliations etc would work as normal. Not sure if that helps, but I think I’ll give it a go myself! Cheers Andrew > On 5 Aug 2024, at 02:27, Daniel Sheffield <d.j.yo...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi, > > I'm using gnucash to manage my personal finances. It's great for tracking > my expenses and I can even forecast short-term (a few months) but schedule > transactions in advance for big ticket items and other regular > expenses (loan repayments). For other more irregular expenses, I use the > budget tool. > > BUT > > I'm trying to keep track of savings towards a goal, but without opening an > actual account or making any real world transactions to achieve it. > ie, I want to keep a tab of what money is available for a specific use and > be able to see at a glance what the balance of each fund is. > > I have been using the budget tool to track how well I stick to it, but the > budget is not necessarily precise down to the last cent so it seems > inappropriate to use the budgeting tool to track an internal account. > > In essence, I would like to use a solution that would be robust enough that > I could use it to track actual customer accounts if I were a business > (assuming local laws would actually allow this sort of behaviour - keeping > all the money in one pot so to speak). > > A concrete example would be good as I have tried various ways (including > Trading Accounts) and they all seem to have some shortcomings. > > I can give example of what I've tried on request - I'm trying to keep this > initial mail short. > > ps, I'm starting to think that GnuCash is not the right tool for this > specific task, as double-entry accounting for this purpose is introducing > more risk of errors (in my opinion) than single-entry accounting... but > then again, I'm probably doing wrong. > > Cheers, > Daniel S > > -- > In the beginning Kibo created the Internet. Now the Internet was formless, > and empty. Randomness was upon the face of computing, and the Spirit of > ARPA moved upon the face of the computers. Then Kibo said, "Let there be > data": and there was data. Kibo saw the data, and it was good, so Kibo > divided the data from the randomness, and Kibo named the data Information, > and the randomness Clueless. And the Information and the Clueless were the > first Network. > _______________________________________________ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > ----- > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
