I an currently using Gnucash to manage my expenses. I am new to double-entry accounting and find many aspects of it to be confusing. Here's a situation that currently happens monthly. I'd like to know the correct way to account for it.
There are a set of bills that Person
owes Company
. I pay these bills to Company
from my checking account. Then Person
deposits the full sum of these bills into my checking account.
How should I be accounting for this?
- Should I be making a single account for
Person
and crediting / debiting that account? - Should I be creating a loan for
Person
? And if so, would I make a new loan each month or would I keep all of the loans in one account? - How do I show the money moving from my checking account to
Company
and then toPerson
's loan? - How do I (or should I even) show the money being reimbursed from the expense?
- Do I debit the expense at any point?
- Should I not concern myself with the source of a loan / repayment and instead just increase the size of the loan?
As far as I'm aware, double-entry accounting is supposed to leave a clear trail from point A to point B of where money comes and goes. I'm not quite sure how to make this trail or if it's even proper in this situation.
Note: Person
is a friend and I do not charge any interest for my service.
tl;dr How do I put into Gnucash that I paid a bill for someone and then they reimbursed me?