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<chapter id="chapter_expenses">
  <title>Expense Accounts</title>

  <para>If managing your checkbook is the first step in tracking your finances, then using expense accounts
  to see where you are expending money is a close second step. This chapter will give you an understanding of
  how &app; uses expense accounts to help you keep track of many different
  categories of transactions.</para>

  <sect1 id="expenses-concepts">
    <title>Concepts</title>
    <para>An expense type account is used to allow you to track how much you spend on specific
    expenses. Many people's first experience with tracking expenses comes from Quicken(tm), where
    transactions can be assigned to one or more categories. In &app;, these categories
    are set up as separate accounts, which are designated as Expense type accounts.
    This allows &app; to apply the rules of double-entry accounting consistently.
    Expense accounts can be as detailed or as general as you need. Some users need only a few accounts for
    personal expense tracking. Others use &app; expense accounts to manage their expenses
    in great detail. The level of detail you choose is up to you. Keep in mind that with &app;,
    you can change accounts for transactions, so if your needs change later on, it is possible to move
    transactions around.</para>
    </sect1>
  <sect1 id="expenses-setup">
    <title>Setting Up Accounts</title>
    <sect2 id="expenses-su-simple">
      <title>Simple Expense Account Setup</title>
      <para>For many users, the easiest way to set up expense accounts is to check the "Common Accounts"
      when you create a new Account Hierarchy. This will establish many of the most common expense accounts
      that users need. See "New Account Hierarchy Setup" in Chapter 3 of the Help guide for more information.</para>
      </sect2>
    <sect2 id="expenses-su-complex">
      <title>Complex Expense Account Setup</title>
      <para>If you have different expense accounting needs, you can refer to <xref linkend="chapter_txns"></xref>,
      or Chapter 5.4 in the Help manual for instructions on how to create accounts.</para>
      <para>Typical reasons for adding new or different expense accounts include: to track
      expenses for particular business purposes (e.g., specific types of supply expenses),
      to track expenses for particular tax purposes (e.g., tax expenses that must be reported
      to others), or simply to track expenses that are meaningful to you (e.g., payments made
      to a particular charity).</para>
      </sect2>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="expenses-entering">
    <title>Entering Expense Transactions</title>
    <para>While it is possible to enter transactions directly into expense accounts, it is
    not normally how these are entered. For most people, transactions for an expense account
    are added when the user is entering data into the other account in the transaction.
    In other words, if you have an expense account for Charitable Donations (e.g., Expenses:Charity),
    you will typically add a transaction to the expense account by assigning a check in your
    checking account register to the Charity account.</para>
    <para>If you open an expense account, you will see a register similar to most others you find
    in &app;. The informal column headings for the transaction amounts
    are slightly different, however. The left (debit) column will read <emphasis>Tot Expense</emphasis>, while
    the right (credit) column will read <emphasis>Tot Rebate</emphasis>.</para>
  </sect1>
  <sect1 id="expenses-other">
    <title>Other Considerations for Expense Accounts</title>
    <para>Because expense accounts are generated entirely by you, there are no statements against
    which you would reconcile your data. Therefore, there is technically nothing to reconcile. You
    can, of course use the reconcile process for expense accounts, which will lock the transactions
    for future editing.</para>
    <para>One point to consider is that as your use of &app; continues, the
    balances in these accounts will grow, since there are usually very few credit transactions that
    reduce the balances. There is nothing wrong with this situation, but some users may wish to clear
    the balances in their expense accounts periodically. Zeroing transactions can be entered that
    transfer the balance of the account to an Equity account. &app; includes
    a Closing Books procedure that includes zeroing out expense accounts. Keep in mind that this is
    not necessary, and that if you need to gather information on a given expense account, you can
    use various reports to extract that data without zeroing the account out.</para>
  </sect1>
</chapter>
