GnuCash Reconcile Fractured Payments

Question

First-time listener; first-time caller.

For reasons I don't quite grok, Amazon sometimes places multiple small transactions on my credit card for a single invoice.

For Example, a recent invoice of $38.13 for four items showed up on my bank statement as six individual charges:

$7.46, $10.14, $5.34, $7.46, $5.34, $2.39

None of these charges correspond directly to items on the invoice so I can't assign them to a corresponding expense category.

My idea is to assign these fragmented payments to an intermediary account, say, 'Charge Fracking' and then split the invoice items out to the proper expense accounts from there. I'm not sure, however, whether the intermediary account would be an expense account or an asset account.

The whole thing makes my head spin so if there's a better/simpler/more elegant way of handling this scenario I'd love to hear about it.

Nice place you've got, here.

Answer 1

While it is not a bad idea to use an intermediate account such as "Current Asset:Prepaid Expense:Amazon", it is not necessary because at any given point of time, you have access to the Invoice issued by Amazon containing individual credit card transactions, such that Amazon Invoice = Bank Statement.

The more convenient way is to simply use the "Split Transaction" feature of GNUCash to directly debit Expense and credit Credit Card, such as:

Debit Expense:Clothing $10

Debit Expense:Electronics $10

Debit Expense:Grocery $10

Debit Expense:Books $8.13

Credit Current Liabilities:Credit Card $7.46

Credit Current Liabilities:Credit Card $10.14

Credit Current Liabilities:Credit Card $5.34

Credit Current Liabilities:Credit Card $7.46

Credit Current Liabilities:Credit Card $5.34

Credit Current Liabilities:Credit Card $2.39

All in 1 transaction. A drawback is that you would lose track of the accurate payment dates for each split entry. However, by the book the Expense incurs upon delivery of the item, not payment.