expense, reimbursement, budget and reprots.

Hello,

Often, I have a situation where handle an expense category for an income,
for example when I return something to a store. Then Money warns me that I
am using the wrong category, but since I know of no other way I go ahead and
use the expense category. Is this the best way to handle this situation?
We it causes my reports to report wrong?

I more complicated situation is when my kidâ??s pay me for living expenses
from the previous month. How do I record the expense and repayment from my
kids and have the reports and budget show the right amount?

Thanks,

Ken

Lynn
Mon Feb 18 12:50:59 CST 2008

Ken wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Often, I have a situation where handle an expense category for an income,
> for example when I return something to a store. Then Money warns me that I
> am using the wrong category, but since I know of no other way I go ahead and
> use the expense category. Is this the best way to handle this situation?
> We it causes my reports to report wrong?
>
> I more complicated situation is when my kidâ??s pay me for living expenses
> from the previous month. How do I record the expense and repayment from my
> kids and have the reports and budget show the right amount?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ken
>

There's nothing wrong with using the expense category for income. As
far as reports go, if the reimbursement is within the same month as the
expense, the result is decrease in that category. If you receive a
reimbursement the next month, another approach instead of recording an
expense is to transfer that expense to a temporary cash account (call it
Refunds & Reimbursements or something). Then, when you receive the
reimbursement, record that as a transfer back into your checking account
or wherever the money is actually going. That way you won't show any net
expense or income.

Dick
Mon Feb 18 18:52:08 CST 2008

To what Lynn wrote, I'd add one detail: some reports will need to be
customized on the details tab to show All Types of transaction rather than
just, say, Payments or Deposits, to show transactions entered against the
normal categorization rules of money in for income and money out for
expense.

There are other ways of handling these kinds of situations at
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?cat=12.

"Ken" <Ken@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E474EABC-8526-4BBB-B90F-179675300EA5@microsoft.com...
> Often, I have a situation where handle an expense category for an income,
> for example when I return something to a store. Then Money warns me that
> I
> am using the wrong category, but since I know of no other way I go ahead
> and
> use the expense category. Is this the best way to handle this situation?
> We it causes my reports to report wrong?
>
> I more complicated situation is when my kidâ??s pay me for living expenses
> from the previous month. How do I record the expense and repayment from
> my
> kids and have the reports and budget show the right amount?