GnuCash register reimbursements

Question

I just started using GnuCash for personal finance, and I'm still figuring out how to register different types of movements of money. The issue I'm not sure about now, is how to register reimbursements from my employer.

E.g: From my normal bank account, (I guess you call it checking account). I pay some sort of expense using my debit card or invoice. This is e.g. lunch or internet bill. When I get my paycheck, this is all in one amount, so I split it into "income" and "reimbursements" as income accounts, and then register this as income to the checking account.

In reports, this would show that I earn more money then I really do, and spend more money then I really do. Is there a way to register this, so reports would show my income and expenses correctly? Some sort of way to deduct the amount from the different expense accounts? I am using the android app to load the .gnucash file. I really like the simple graphs there.

Thanks for all input on this!

Answer 1

You should be recording the reimbursement as a negative expense on the original account the expense was recorded.

Let's assume you have a $100 expense and $100 salary. Total $200 paycheck. You will have something like this

acct     | cr     |    db  | acct
expense  | $100   |   $100 | checking    << expense $100 from checking
split    |        |  ($200)| checking    << $200 paycheck deposit
expense  | ($100) |        |             << reimbursement
salary   |  $100  |        |             << salary income

In the reports, it will show that the expense account will have $0 ($100 + ($100)), while income account will have $100 (salary).