One thought that just came to mind would be to treat the Mileage as a
currency and create that account in the "Mileage" currency.
i.e. set a currency rate to the effect of 1 mile = 34c (or what ever the
rate is)
In order to do this you may have to "rename" a currency that you don't ever
plan to use.

-Mark

"Retired Coal Miner" <...[at]...> wrote in message
news:XZOdnb1giI_kmrDVnZ2dnUVZ_tjinZ2d[at]comcast.com...
- quote -

I did this one year, back when it sunk in how asset accounts are meant to work.

The way I saw it, you are either donating cash/financial instruments, which
you should be tracking already, or some physical object that you may or may
not already be tracking as an asset. If you are already tracking the object,
you deduct it or xfer it to the donations account and deduct it. But this
scheme works well for items you are not currently tracking as an asset, you
enter the items in the account register and then do the deduction when you
donate.

IRS Mileage deductions don't fit well with this. The only units of measure
Money knows are currency. For your taxes, you want to know miles and you do
the conversion to dollars when you fill out your tax forms. No good answer
here, other than maybe carry the mileage as the dollar equivalent and perhaps
do the file link to scanned images of the receipts or mileage log book.

Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

That'd be another strategy--although even just a straight cash account would
work. It still wouldn't support directly doing mileage, for instance. But
you might not want it adding to net worth...

"Retired Coal Miner" <...[at]...> wrote in message
news:Lf-dnU7xevWcSrHVnZ2dnUVZ_vSdnZ2d[at]comcast.com...
- quote -

Would an asset account also work for tracking this? You show the asset
account starting on Jan 1, and add individual transactions to it to represent
the items donated as the year progresses. When you make the donations, you
debit the account, and the categories used for the deductions are the ones
setup to show up on the tax report?


Dick Watson wrote:
- quote -

That makes it even easier. Enter a $0 transactions split into two $0
Charitable Donations : Non-cash items, one with memo 100 shirts, other with
memo 100 jeans. When you do your taxes, report this category and annotate the
report with what you want to value to be.

"R. Ian Lee" wrote:

- quote -

I guess that would work but doesn't really seem robust enough. In your
example, I'd rather be able to enter it as 200 items (100 shirts, 100 jeans)
and then use the deduction rate at the time I do taxes (which may not be the
same as when I make the entry).

I didn't really expect to find an answer in Money for this, but meant this
more as a request to Microsoft. I guess I'll keep using Excel until
improvements come...

"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

You can make debits out of them in $0 split transactions in, say, your pocket
change account.

e.g., $100.00 Charitable Donations : Non-cash, memo: 245 lbs of clothing to
Goodwill in a split with ($100.00) unassigned income, memo: offset just to
get this captured.

Alternately, Excel is frequently a quite useful add-in to Money.

"R. Ian Lee" wrote:

- quote -

It sure would be nice if there was a way in Money where I could track all of
my deductions and see a report at tax time of a summary. Sure, I can use
Deduction Pro or similar software, but I'd like to not have to do double
entry for expenditures. The types of deductions I'm talking about are things
like mileage, donations, etc. that do not necessarily have a debit associated
with them.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/communities...t.public.money