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Reimbursing an Account of Family Member

mac4d

I am using Quicken Classic Deluxe for Mac version 7.5.2.

Need assistance with reimbursements. I understand them if it is with a friend for concert tickets, etc and utilizing a Reimbursable account, which works great to always have a running balance.

I maybe over thinking it but I am wanting something that works with an Account that I track for someone in the household and within the Quicken file.

We have purchases on our credit cards for them that need to be paid back and Categorized for the other family member. What are the Categories for our credit cards at time of expense and when paid back? And what are the Categories for the other household member when expense is paid back.

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jacobs

If you already have an asset account you use for reimbursements for external split expenses, I'd recommend the same approach for your intra-family split expenses. I'd create an asset account; call it "Exchange" or "Expense Sharing" or whatever seems appropriate to you. When you make a purchase on your credit card that is fully or partly to be paid back by another family member, record the transaction in your credit card account, but there is not expense category, because this isn't an expense for you — so enter it as a transfer to the "Exchange" account. If part of the credit card charge if for you and part for someone else which will be reimbursed, make the purchase transaction a split, with one split line for your personal expense using the appropriate category, and another split line for the other family member using a Transfer to the "Exchange" account.

For instance, let's say you go to Costco and make a $100 credit card purchase, of which $40 is groceries for you and $60 is clothing for another family member who will pay you back. In your credit card account, you'd enter the $100 transaction for Costco, with one split line for $40 and Category=Groceries, and the other split line for $60 and Transfer=Exchange (or Category="Transfer:[Exchange]", which does the same thing.)

So now you've recorded $40 of actual expenses, and your Exchange asset account shows you are owed $60. When you get the $60 paid back, you will make an entry of a deposit into your checking account (if you receive a check, digital deposit in your account via Venmo or PayPal or Zelle) or cash account of $60, again with Transfer=Exchange or Category="Transfer:[Exchange]". At that point, your Exchange account will go back to zero, and your total expense remains the original $40.

If you have multiple family members involved in this, you could optionally add Tags with the person's name on each transaction (the purchase and the reimbursement), so you could run a report by Tags to see the balance of each family member.

The above assumes that the expenses for the other family member who is reimbursing you should not show up as an expense for you in Quicken. It's not clear to me from your post if what you're looking for is how to record the purchase as an expense for you, and also track how much you spend for the family member and what they have paid back. If you want the one transaction to be both an expense for you and a transfer to the asset account for what you are owed, in Quicken Mac you can't do that (or shouldn't, because there is a way you can which will cause problems with reports and budgets). So that requires some sort of a hack to do both things. I won't go down that road until/unless you post back saying that's what you're wanting to do.

mac4d

Thanks for your response! I follow the original purchase with a split transaction, part as my expense and part to the Exchange account. I also follow the deposit back to me and clearing the Exchange balance. All of that takes care of my side.

How does the payment from the family member look from their side (their account is currently in our file)? It is important to track their expenses for reporting on how their money is spent.

Keeping with Costco example would they just have one transaction for the deposit to me? Family Member Account: Payee: "My Name" or "Txfr to my Checking XXXX (as downloaded from bank), Category: Costco Shopping

Is that correct?

jacobs

How does the payment from the family member look from their side (their account is currently in our file)? It is important to track their expenses for reporting on how their money is spent.

Ah, I understand more fully now. You're trying to do something difficult: count a transaction being used for two different purposes. You want to track what you are lending and receiving, and you want to track and categorize their spending. I don't know if it's possible to do both without creating duplicate transactions for the two purposes.

First, can you clarify what you mean that "their account is currently in our file". Are you referring to a separate actual banking account, like a checking account for the other family member? Or just a dummy account (not an actual real-world account) which you're using to try to track their spending?

(Quicken has a feature called Separate accounts, which are designed for tracking accounts belonging to family members which you don't want included in your net worth or reports. But they key there is that there are actual accounts for the other individual which you're handling. In your case, it sounds like the other family member doesn't have their own checking and credit card accounts for making their own purchases; their purchases are being made out of your checking and credit card accounts — so Separate Accounts doesn't solve the problem.)

One way to do this would be to have a separate Quicken data file for the other family member, which would allow tracking their own spending separate from yours. The downside to this: transfers between you and them would need to be recorded separately in each data file. If it's one or two transactions a month, that might not be a problem, but if it's more, it might be too onerous.

Keeping with Costco example would they just have one transaction for the deposit to me? Family Member Account: Payee: "My Name" or "Txfr to my Checking XXXX (as downloaded from bank), Category: Costco Shopping

There are two problems with that. First, the deposit to you needs to be categorized in Quicken as Transfer:[Exchange] in order to reduce the amount they owe you. But then you can't treat that as an expense as well. And even if we did a hack to get around that, would you even want it as an expense? Since it's in your data file, if you categorize it with an expense category, it would show up as an expense of yours.

If you just want to get a report of what the other family member spent, then I'd go back to the idea of adding a Tag for them to each purchase transaction. A report byTags, or a report of Tag=family member would give you a list of all the purchase transactions for that person. But it wouldn't categorize them by shopping or gas or food because the tagged transactions are all transfers to the Exchange account. Again, if it's just a few transactions here and there, you could just print a report and categorize the spending manually with a calculator, but if it's lots of spending, that might not be practical. you could export the report of tagged transactions to a spreadsheet, and in the spreadsheet categorize them, but I'm guessing that's not what you're looking for.