How to model for shared expenses

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namezero911
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How to model for shared expenses

Post by namezero911 »

Hi,

I'm wondering how to model a shared expense scenario, making sure that my reports don't show incorrect values.

Here is an example:
I pay for a trip that I do together with my wife. Let's say I put this as a withdrawal of 1000€ into MMEX, using the "travels" category.
My wife and I shared the costs, so she wire-transfers half of the expenses to my checkings account. I'm currently putting this as deposit into MMEX, using a different category (not "travels"), because MMEX's help page explicitly says this:
Do not use the same category for Deposit and Withdrawal transactions, as this will upset overall balance figures.
The problem: the generated expense reports will tell me that I spent 1000€ on traveling, which is semantically incorrect. In reality, I only spent 500€. What should I do? Should I ignore the advice in the manual and use the same category for the withdrawal and deposit, and hope for the best?

Cheers!
Nikolay
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Re: How to model for shared expenses

Post by Nikolay »

I'll prefer the following scenario:
- Create "My-wife" account.
- Transfers half of the expenses to my checking account from "My-wife" account
- spent 1000 on traveling
or 500 + 500 with notes my_travel_expenses and my_wife_travel_expenses
or 500 on travels + 500 on travels_my_wife

But if you want to see only your expense:
- spent 1000 on traveling
- deposit 500 on the same category as wife's part of the expenses. (Use "travels", ignore rules)
namezero911
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Re: How to model for shared expenses

Post by namezero911 »

Thanks for your response. I'll try to use the same category then.
siowena
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Re: How to model for shared expenses

Post by siowena »

namezero911

While the rule is as you quote, this is really from main accountancy rules - I've been doing what Nikolay suggests in his part 2. I've not seen any major issues yet.
I tried having a reimbursement category, but that still showed I spend 1000 on travel and has 500 reimbursement so budget reporting was off.

So, for business expenses I have a separate reimbursement category because of the my way of needing to track my business expenses and the reimbursements in my payroll.

For personal expenses where I'm getting monies from other people (such as you do with your wife) or companies give refunds direct to cc, I just put a deposit from the same payee on the same category.

So far I've not see any issues. Some custom reports show a category as an income category when it's really an expense due to it having a +ve transaction.

For my partner, I have a separate account also and transfer monies from her to the appropriate account, but for most people they're just another payee.
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