Since the column title is 'Payee', I've always handled that title as money 'To' the payee. If I'm receiving a refund from the person, I actually make the Payee in parentheses ().
Sometimes I have a transaction for 'Friends' when they pay dinner on card and we reimburse in cash.
If it's the other way around and we pay by card, we have our Payee as 'Restaurant' and our reimbursements as '(Friends)
I think I only did that so I could visually see it better and it worked well for sorting transactions. Now that Financier has multiple sorting, my approach is probably obsolete.
Removing the parentheses will also help with reporting income/expense or spending by Payee as they're no longer split, although Payee is never going to give me an accurate report because as I mentioned above, paying by card is one Payee and receiving reimbursement in cash from friends is another Payee. Tracking this would be spending by Category.
Would like to know what approach you have for income, if any.
I use generic payee names like restaurant, gas station, grocery store, etc.
For example if I pay for a group meal on my card, and a friend venmos me their share. I record both transactions with the restaurant payee and either my fun category (or possibly our joint fun category). That way the transactions net together as if I only paid for my portion in all reports.
I think I remember why I split Categories with different Payee:
If I pay for a group meal on my card, and a friend reimburses me their share with cash/electronic transfer, I record the transaction with the restaurant payee and category as dining out, then I record a transaction with the friend Payee and category as dining out.
That way the transactions net together by category so the budget isn't affected but because I paid by card, I gain points. I can search by restaurant Payee (with credit card account) to determine the points I've gained through spending. This is (probably) the reason why I set payees this way but tracking points could also be done simply by looking at the outgoing spend per account, filtered by Payee.
Probably micro budgeting too much. I could reduce my Payee list...