I just got the direct deposit notification for my expense report reimbursement. $6,100. However, my total reimbursable expenses incurred were $5,400. The excess is because the meals portion of my per diem ($90/day) was reimbursed on a flat rate and I generally averaged around $30/day in spending. (this is why the right arrow is so important for my tracking!). During the trip, in addition to expensable items (lunch, dinner, lodging, transpo to/from airport, visa, vaccinations, etc), I also categorized various expenses to Reimbursables that I knew would be covered by my excess per diem - Uber rides to restaurants, the sweet sweet $272 upgrade to Business Class for the trans-Atlantic portion of the return flight, VPN subscription for the month, etc.
Anyway, a thought occurred to me: should I be categorizing the whole $6100 deposit to the Reimbursables category and then WAM the excess to the desired category (HVAC replacement - super fun!) or should I split the transaction with enough going to Reimbursables to zero it out and the rest going to Income for January to then be assigned to HVAC replacement? I've always done it the the first way since starting YNAB in 2014, but that doesn't make it right (or best) . . .
I would probably use the same scheme you've been using. That makes sense to me. The real question is how do you want the payment to affect your reports?
Yeah, I guess I don't care too much what the report says in that regard - I care how much I spend on Clothing and Accessories (too much! darn you handbag obsession!), not how I came up with the money to allocate to that category.
That's exactly what I did when I used to travel for work ~50% of the year. The reimbursement would go back into the category, and I would occasionally negative budget excess out of the category. Since I was always traveling, I wasn't able to pull out of the excess until I finally left the job. With the amount of travel I did, I had to be very diligent about tracking my work expenses.
Hey, jenmas :D
Personally, I'd use the latter method - the split transaction method covering the reimbursables to $0 and the rest to income to be assigned to your preferred extra special category.