General Question About Accounts

This may sound very dumb but I am having a problem getting my individual
accounts to balance. For example, I purchased textbooks for $100, but later
i received a credit in the amount of $50 as a refund. I use the
education:textbooks category for the initial expense and thought I could use
the the same account for the refund (just saving as a deposit rather than a
expense) Shouldn't this offset the original balance? For some reason the
credit is totaled into the total expense. This is evident when I open the
category to see the transactions. Any ideas as to why, or even better, a
solution to solve this problem? I hope I explained the situation in enough
detail.

Thanks!

I would suggest creating some kind of suspense account (many people call it
"in transit").

So, keeping your example going...when you made the purchase, I would do $50
as a charge to your "education: textbooks" account and $50 as a "transfer:
[suspense acount name]". When your credit comes in, you simply categorize
the amount as a "transfer: [suspense account name]" and the net effect is
zero. This keeps your "true" textbook expense of $50 in-tact. I do the same
thing when I receive rebates.

When I began using Money, I did what you're trying to do, which does work,
but I ran into problems when I was trying to run reports and sometimes Money
would only give me the balance of all the expenses but would ignore any
contra-entries (so it wouldn't give me the net balance).

"craigw79" wrote:

> This may sound very dumb but I am having a problem getting my individual
> accounts to balance. For example, I purchased textbooks for $100, but later
> i received a credit in the amount of $50 as a refund. I use the
> education:textbooks category for the initial expense and thought I could use
> the the same account for the refund (just saving as a deposit rather than a
> expense) Shouldn't this offset the original balance? For some reason the
> credit is totaled into the total expense. This is evident when I open the
> category to see the transactions. Any ideas as to why, or even better, a
> solution to solve this problem? I hope I explained the situation in enough
> detail.
>
> Thanks!

There may be differences depending on what version of money you are using,
but...if you are using Reports to analyze the categories, be sure you check
how the reports are customized. For instance, the Spending by Category
report defaults to using only Expense transactions. If you Customize using
the Details tab, and select All Transactions, it will include the negative
expenses resulting from your rebate. At least, this works for me - I use
your method for rebates and refunds. Hope this helps.
--
Joaneee


"craigw79" wrote:

> This may sound very dumb but I am having a problem getting my individual
> accounts to balance. For example, I purchased textbooks for $100, but later
> i received a credit in the amount of $50 as a refund. I use the
> education:textbooks category for the initial expense and thought I could use
> the the same account for the refund (just saving as a deposit rather than a
> expense) Shouldn't this offset the original balance? For some reason the
> credit is totaled into the total expense. This is evident when I open the
> category to see the transactions. Any ideas as to why, or even better, a
> solution to solve this problem? I hope I explained the situation in enough
> detail.
>
> Thanks!

Thank you both for your quick responses. I changed the customizable options
in the report and it did exactly what I needed it to. Thanks again!
"Joaneee" wrote:

> There may be differences depending on what version of money you are using,
> but...if you are using Reports to analyze the categories, be sure you check
> how the reports are customized. For instance, the Spending by Category
> report defaults to using only Expense transactions. If you Customize using
> the Details tab, and select All Transactions, it will include the negative
> expenses resulting from your rebate. At least, this works for me - I use
> your method for rebates and refunds. Hope this helps.
> --
> Joaneee
>
>
> "craigw79" wrote:
>
> > This may sound very dumb but I am having a problem getting my individual
> > accounts to balance. For example, I purchased textbooks for $100, but later
> > i received a credit in the amount of $50 as a refund. I use the
> > education:textbooks category for the initial expense and thought I could use
> > the the same account for the refund (just saving as a deposit rather than a
> > expense) Shouldn't this offset the original balance? For some reason the
> > credit is totaled into the total expense. This is evident when I open the
> > category to see the transactions. Any ideas as to why, or even better, a
> > solution to solve this problem? I hope I explained the situation in enough
> > detail.
> >
> > Thanks!