GNUcash: How can I add a liability payment to an asset account? (ex: I pay a personal loan of mine and someone reimburses me for it)

Question

I have a personal loan that I pay out of my checking account and my parents reimburse me for this loan. I also share subscription services (netflix, hulu,etc) and phone bill with them and I pay for them and then they pay me back later.

The 4 accounts that I have setup for this are;

1. Bank:Checking Account
2. Expense:Netflix etc
3. Liability:Personal Loan
4. Asset:Money Owed to Me:Mom

Whenever I pay for Netflix I will just split out my share to my expense account and add the remainder to the Asset:Money Owed to Me:Mom account. This works as I expect it and need it to.

Now, when I pay for the Liability:Personal Loan out of Bank:Checking Account it reduces my balance on the loan which I expect and need it to but how do I add that transaction to the asset account to add to the balance that is owed to me?

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I have tried to make the liability account as a child account of the asset account, that didn't work as why would it?

I have tried to add an invoice under the asset account but if I invoice it for a positive integer it removes the invoice total from the balance. To solve for this I made the invoice amount a negative integer but that just seems messy and incorrect.

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What would be the best way for me to handle this? Any help is appreciated!

I have

Answer 1

You appear to be accounting for the Netflix subscription correctly. The part of the bill that you are responsible for is your personal expense, but the amount that you pay on behalf of your parents is an amount that should be reimbursed to you. It is correct to record this under Asset:Money Owed to Me when you make the payment, then reduce the amount of this asset when you are later reimbursed by your parents.

The matter of your personal loan is more problematic.

I can't help but think that your difficulty in getting your accounts to reflect that your mother owes you money for your personal loan is because she doesn't owe you money for it. Your accounts are your accounts. Your debt is your debt. Neither the fact that you have a personal debt nor the fact that you've made a payment towards it will result in your mother owing money to you, either legally or because of the rules of accounting.

Based on what you've stated, you have an expectation that your parents will make a payment to you equal to the amount that you've expended on loan repayments. They will do this because they've made a personal agreement with you, not because it's their debt.

If you want to make a suggestion to your parents about how much they might "reimburse" to you, you can do a transaction report on your Liability:Personal Loan account to get a summary of your repayments for an given period (and add any Netflix expenses recorded under Asset:Money Owed to Me which you indisputably are owed).

The portion of Mom's payment that covers your loan repayment might be shown in your accounts as Income:Gift from Mom or something similar.