I have setup 3 shared credit cards on the system which are used to handle the family finances such as food, gas/elec etc.
I don’t want to setup any bank accounts as each person has their own bank account and all we really want to record is shared expenses such as food etc.
Would the best way to use an income account (like Salary, but renamed to something more logical for this use) and “pay” into the relevant amount into the relevant credit card, almost like paying salary into your bank account? If that works, I will do that, and just come up with a better name than Salary for this “income” account.
That makes no sense to me. Personally, I would never use a double entry accounting system to track personal expenses. Too much work!
But if you insist, you need to record member’s contributions as incoming capital. If you aren’t going to have a “family” bank account, you could create a virtual cash account and post contributions to it. Then record payments of credit card debt statements as coming from the virtual cash account.
I would never use any formal accounting package like Manager and its competitors for this. Just look for some phone apps that relate to family expenses and forget about using any accounting package that in essence is there for tax purposes.
We have just realised that one of the actual bank accounts is also used to pay on of the credit card bills. So I have added that bank account. I am just going to create another income account such as Utilities and use that.
What I like about Manager is that I am familiar with it and it does have the ability to create monthly and 5 year reports under profit and loss, as well as an annual budget. It is so much easier to see everything in the summary page. I find personal expense apps for phones are a bit too simplistic or basic.
Once I have the dummy account setup, it should be a doddle to use in future as everything else has now been setup. Thanks.