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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Bank on March 07, 2014, 05:59:13 PM

Title: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: Bank on March 07, 2014, 05:59:13 PM
I use Mint to keep track of my finances and concede that it has many small annoyances.  However, the one that really bugs me is its treatment of reimbursable expenses.  I travel a lot for work at times, so I will have months where I will have thousands of dollars in food, hotels, and transport charges.

I know you can flag these transactions as reimbursable (and I do) but that does not deduct them from the pie charts and graphs in the Trends section.  At least it doesn't for me.

I don't want to solve this problem by deleting the transactions from Mint by putting them on an unassociated credit card, because I also use Mint to monitor for fraudulent/mistaken charges and to ensure that my expense reports are correct.  Oops -- forgot that train ticket!  Better go find the receipt!

So my question is:  can I tweak my settings in such a way that reimbursable charges continue to show up in the transaction history, but are excluded from the Trends section.  Failing that, is there a better personal accounting package out there?  I'm fairly sophisticated financially (CPA - non reporting) but I don't want to be manually typing all of my data into a spreadsheet.  I generally like Mint --- it's not perfect but it is easy.  However this one thing is making its summary functions almost useless to me.
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: dragoncar on March 07, 2014, 06:26:20 PM
You shot down all my ideas.  Can Mint export the data to a spreadsheet?  Can you "classify" the transactions as something silly like "transfers"?
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: plantingourpennies on March 07, 2014, 06:53:32 PM
Mint has an option to "Hide From Budgets and Trends".  I think it's at the bottom of the list of categories when you can change the category. 

If you use one card specifically that you want hidden, you might be able to make a rule that categorizes everything from that card as "Hide from Budgets and Trends". 

Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: Bank on March 07, 2014, 06:59:08 PM
POP - brilliant.  Thanks so much.  I don't know how I missed that tag all this time.

Dragoncar - thanks for your response as well.  Mint does have an export to Excel function which I use for advanced number crunching.
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: MDM on March 07, 2014, 08:54:37 PM
For a similar situation, using Quicken, I created a suspense account called Work_Reimb.  Charged expenses to that account (instead of categorizing them as fuel, dining, etc.) and credited the company reimbursements as they came in.

It is easy enough to exclude a particular account from any report, and ensuring that account zeroes every so often is a check on whether correct expense reports have been submitted.
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: Spork on March 07, 2014, 09:40:13 PM
I don't use Mint... so forgive me here.  I use gnucash... but maybe, MAYBE this works in other accounting programs.

Can you enter it as an expense... then when reimbursed enter it as a negative expense?  I think it's pretty standard double entry bookkeeping.  In gnucash, it effectively erases the expense, while keeping the transaction history.
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: Bank on March 08, 2014, 10:23:07 AM
Thanks MDM - that's a good thought.  I know Quicken is more flexible than Mint.

Spork - I might be able to do that, but for it to work I would have to split the reimbursement checks up into individual or category offsets.  I think the "exclude from trends" option will be easier.

I might check out gnucash.  Sounds pretty flexible if you know what you're doing.  Does it automatically import credit card and bank account information like Mint?
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: fumanchu282 on March 08, 2014, 11:07:26 AM
It's possible to create a custom tag and then tell Mint to exclude anything tagged with that tag from budgets and trends. I have done this myself, and made a tag called 'Reimbursable'. I go through the transactions list and tag items as necessary
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: Spork on March 08, 2014, 12:48:20 PM
Thanks MDM - that's a good thought.  I know Quicken is more flexible than Mint.

Spork - I might be able to do that, but for it to work I would have to split the reimbursement checks up into individual or category offsets.  I think the "exclude from trends" option will be easier.

I might check out gnucash.  Sounds pretty flexible if you know what you're doing.  Does it automatically import credit card and bank account information like Mint?

So... gnucash doesn't use categories.  Categories are sort of made up things.  Gnucash uses Assets/Liabilities/Income/Expenses, like you'd do in accounting 101.  You have subcategories in expenses that are effectively like the other tools' categories... but... aren't exactly the same....   That's why I didn't know if that would work.

In gnucash, it's a second reversing transaction that cleans this sort of stuff up.

As far as automatic imports:  I know it has some of that built in... but it is developed in Europe, so I have no idea if that works here.  I don't do that for security reasons.  I don't like saved passwords.  I do know if you can export from a bank/creditcard company in MS money or quicken format, you can import into gnucash.  I do a little bit of that, but mostly enter by hand (to make sure my records match the banks' records -- If you just download the banks' records, there isn't any cross check.)
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: AlanStache on March 08, 2014, 01:18:48 PM
I travel a bit too and the powerful potential of Mint is somewhat diluted with the clutter of reimbursements.  I do tag explicit costs with "Hide From Budgets and Trends", but there are plenty of subtler things like high phone bills while over sees that are partly reimbursed.  Or per diem from the company that is in the same bank transaction as the reimbursed hotel room where you cant (or you would have to jump through a hoop) to split this out.  And putting perdiem as income seems not quite right anyway.

Labeling the big things to be hidden from budgets gets ride of the major stupidity but getting a 100% accurate budget would take real effort.  I use it mainly to look at obvious at home spending in an effort to minimize that rather than trying to use it to get an exact "I spent 53.21$ more this month than last month." There is just to much noise going on to find that and it is missing the forest for the trees.
Title: Re: Dealing with Reimbursable Transactions In Mint
Post by: brooklynmoney on March 08, 2014, 06:51:01 PM
I just tag everything for work that I'll get reimbursed for under Business Services and then when I deposit the check I categorize that as Business Services, so it evens out in the end.