[SOLVED] Split Transactions in GNUCash: Giving gripe

MetaMan · 06-02-2011, 10:17 AM

OK, I've been trying to get a family member to switch over to Ubuntu, and as of now his computer is dual-booting Ubuntu and Windows. He uses Quicken and I wanted to give him as few reasons as possible to boot windows.

I installed GNUCash, and he started using it just fine until he tried entering a split transaction.

It was like this: Person A donated w amount of dollars, Person B x amount of dollars, Person C y amount of dollars, and Person D z amount of dollars. These all were deposited at the same time to form a deposit of d dollars.

How would this be entered? Please try to show the exact output if possible.

Thanks!

JPPIStu · 06-02-2011, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MetaMan

How would this be entered? Please try to show the exact output if possible.

This depends on how the accounts are structured. So, for my example, I'll assume that he is tracking donations as income, each donor is tracked individually, he is depositing to a checking account called "Checking," and he is entering this in the register for the checking account. The following is how it might look, using Double Line view with split detail revealed:

Code:

06/02/2011          Multiple Sources       -- Split Transaction --    35.00
           Deposit  Multiple donations
                    Checking account       Checking                   35.00
                    Person A               Income:Donations:Person A         10.00
                    Person B               Income:Donations:Person B          5.00
                    Person C               Income:Donations:Person C          5.00
                    Person D               Income:Donations:Person D         15.00

Hope that makes sense...

(Edited to include the "split transaction" indicator.)

MetaMan · 06-02-2011, 06:30 PM

Is there a way to do this without tracking each individual person?

JPPIStu · 06-02-2011, 06:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MetaMan

Is there a way to do this without tracking each individual person?

You could lump all donations into one "income:donations" account, in which case it's not a split transaction anymore, but this loses the information that you seemed to want to keep (i.e., knowing how much each person donated). If you don't care about that, then the above transaction would not use the split transaction feature and could look more like:

Code:

06/02/2011          Multiple Sources         Income:Donations          35.00
           Deposit  Person A, $10; Person B, $5; Person C, $5; Person D: $15

Note that the free-text info about each person's donations isn't really useful since it's just in the memo field, so (for example) you wouldn't be able to run a report to find out how much Person B donated.

MetaMan · 06-02-2011, 07:04 PM

The memo tactic should be fine, he just needs to know those numbers so he can designate the money to certain funds later.

Update: We did some thinking, and the Income : Donations should work with his setup.