I use manager for my personal finances. And the reality of a general user like me is I keep my actual cash in banks but that single bank account doesn’t just contain my savings. It may also contain my travel budget savings for next year.
Now creating a chart of accounts with subaccounts then doing journal entries I can do this segregation. But it won’t reflect in my Bank and Cash Accounts making that and other complementary features unusable.
You can use Control Accounts to separate cash and bank accounts under CoA
I want to make subaccounts for bank accounts
There is not a “subaccount” thing under Manager. However, again, you can assign one or more bank account to an account of the Chart of Accounts through Control Accounts. So you will have an account with two or more bank accounts under it.
Will there one in the future? Because it will be difficult to use bank reconciliations
You are not really clear what you want to do. Each bank account is unique and has a unique number. Bank statement imports therefore import one to one meaning that there is only on Bank Statement for one Bank account. If you have more bank accounts like a current and a savings account then each of these have their own bank statements and should be separately entered. If you want to “see” these accounts in Summary you need to set up as recommended Control Accounts for each (in settings).
@samflynn, see the Guide about control accounts: Add custom control accounts | Manager. The Cash at bank account you see by default is a control account containing all bank accounts you create. But you can create separate control accounts and assign the bank accounts to them for separate visibility.
This has been explained many times in other forum topics, which can search for.
I only have one bank account but my problem is I don’t only use it for my life savings. I also deposit there other budgets for my future. Like my budget to buy a house, budget to buy a new car. How can I track these segregation in manager?
I can use control accounts but the bank reconciliation feature wouldn’t be as useful any longer.
Yes I’ve also seen those topics but then the challenge would be that bank reconciliation feature wouldn’t provide a 1:1 value of the actual bank account value.
His about using a custom field to subclassify payments and than query them with a custom report?
@samflynn, your segregation of funds is imaginary. If you want, you could artificially separate transactions into virtual bank accounts, all of which would be summarized under Cash at bank. But you are right, you would not be able to use the Bank Reconciliations tab. Only you can decide if that matters to you. With only one personal account, it might not be that important. But you cannot have it both ways.
The other alternative is elaborate sinking funds and provisional accounts. Do you really want to go there?The fact is, all the deposits into your bank account are indistinguishable from all the others. Money is money. You need to decide how much effort you want to put into keeping track of financial goals that can probably be summarized on half a sheet of paper.
It is clearer now. This is quite similar to making provisions as discussed Balance Sheet Report + Processing Provisions - #37 by kobus_Jhg (read posts from bottom to top, ie latest first). You would setup some provision/budget accounts as cash (not bank even though it technically is bank):
Create the following cash control accounts in settings:
Create the following cash accounts (use bank and cash accounts tab):
You need to activate “Inter Account Transfers” in customize. You then would see an Inter Account Transfers tab where you can transfer from Bank account whatever amounts you want to these provisional/budget accounts. When ready to buy the new car or use some of the life savings you do another account transfer where these go from the cash accounts you created to the bank account to make the expenses.
Yes my initial setup was to create multiple control accounts, but again I was hoping there is a different solution because then bank reconciliation won’t be usable. Unfortunately creating “subaccounts” is crucial to me because I keep track of more than just the 2 budgets I gave as examples and writing them down on a sheet of paper kinda defeats the purpose of Manager.
Thank you @ eko @Tut @Davide for taking the time to respond. I appreciate the help.
What if you create asset accounts for the savings you want to track, eg Life Savings, House Purchase, etc. You will maintain a single bank account. When you save fund for a specific matter like Life savings, you will receive fund into the bank account from the Life Savings account. Each time you utilize/withdraw fund for each of the matter, you pay from the bank account to the asset account. This way the balance in the asset account shows the portion of the balance in the bank account due to/from the asset account
Your balance sheet will look like below. Negative balances in the assets account means the they are owed by the bank to that extent while positive balances means you have over spent your budget or savings towards that matter. The net effect on your assets is zero.
The problem with that approach is that it shows your net assets are zero when they are not. The various savings accounts you created are not real. Therefore, you cannot receive money in the bank account from them. Receipts are used only when money enters the accounting entity. You cannot receive money from your own savings.
This still comes down to having to give up bank reconciliations if you want to arbitrarily subdivide your bank account balance.
Subaccounts are basically tags on each transaction. Again, how about just using a custom field? Than you will be able to filter movements with this flag.
If you utilise the import bank statement feature then the bank reconciliation facility is completely redundant as the actual Bank account balance as at the import date will always exactly match the Manager bank account balance.