doc update

This commit is contained in:
John Wiegley 2005-02-10 06:35:46 +00:00
parent 0ce42d6c00
commit 9b653f66ee

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@ -2610,6 +2610,7 @@ For this entry, Ledger will figure out that $-23.00 must come from
* Accounts and Inventories::
* Understanding Equity::
* Dealing with Petty Cash::
* Working with multiple funds and accounts::
* Archiving previous years::
* Virtual transactions::
* Automated transactions::
@ -3125,7 +3126,7 @@ Clear as mud? Keep thinking about it. Until you figure it out, put
@samp{-Equity} at the end of your balance command, to remove the
confusing figure from the total.
@node Dealing with Petty Cash, Archiving previous years, Understanding Equity, Keeping a ledger
@node Dealing with Petty Cash, Working with multiple funds and accounts, Understanding Equity, Keeping a ledger
@section Dealing with Petty Cash
Something that stops many people from keeping a ledger at all is the
@ -3156,7 +3157,87 @@ the target account:
This way, you can still track large cash expenses, while ignoring all
of the smaller ones.
@node Archiving previous years, Virtual transactions, Dealing with Petty Cash, Keeping a ledger
@node Working with multiple funds and accounts, Archiving previous years, Dealing with Petty Cash, Keeping a ledger
@section Working with multiple funds and accounts
There are situations when the accounts you're tracking are different
between your clients and the financial institutions where money is
kept. An example of this is working as the treasurer for a religious
institution. From the secular point of view, you might be working
with three different accounts:
@itemize
@item Checking
@item Savings
@item Credit Card
@end itemize
From a religious point of view, the community expects to divide its
resources into multiple ``funds'', from which it expects to make
purchases or reserve resources for later:
@itemize
@item School fund
@item Building fund
@item Community fund
@end itemize
The problem with this kind of setup is that when you spend money, it
comes from two or more places: the account and the fund. And yet, the
correlation of amounts between funds and accounts is rarely
one-to-one. What if the school fund has @samp{$500.00}, but
@samp{$400.00} of that comes from Checking, and @samp{$100.00} from
Savings?
Using a traditional finance package would require that money reside in
only one place. But there are really two views to the data: from the
account point of view, you want one set of reports; from the fund
point of view, another set entirely -- and yet both sets should
reflect the same expenses and incoming. It's just where the money
``resides'' that differs.
This situation can be handled using virtual transactions to represent
the fact that money is moving to and from two kind of accounts at the
same time:
@smallexample
2004/03/20 Contributions
Assets:Checking $500.00
Income:Donations
2004/03/25 Distribution of donations
[Funds:School] $300.00
[Funds:Building] $200.00
[Assets:Checking] $-500.00
@end smallexample
The use of square brackets in the second entry ensures that the
virtual transactions balance to zero.
Now money can be spent directly from a fund:
@smallexample
2004/03/25 Payment for books (paid from Checking)
Expenses:Books $100.00
Assets:Checking $-100.00
(Funds:School) $-100.00
@end smallexample
When reports are generated, by default they will appear in terms of
the funds, income and expenses. If the @option{--real} option is
used, the report is in terms of the accounts. If more asset accounts
are needed as the source of a transaction, just list them as you would
normally, for example:
@smallexample
2004/03/25 Payment for books (paid from Checking)
Expenses:Books $100.00
Assets:Checking $-50.00
Liabilities:Credit Card $-50.00
(Funds:School) $-100.00
@end smallexample
@node Archiving previous years, Virtual transactions, Working with multiple funds and accounts, Keeping a ledger
@section Archiving previous years
After a while, your ledger can get to be pretty large. While this