This is a sequel to my last post "Answering questions with accounting: Reimbursements". In that post, I talked about how I use Ledger to track my medical reimbursements with my insurance company.

In this post, we'll take things one step farther and I'll talk about how I'm tracking reimbursable expenses that I share with my partner.

# Some Quick Backstory

My partner and I do not have a joint checking account, but we do have various expenses we share the cost of.

One such shared expense is our dog: Pigby.

We have pet insurance for Pigby and when we go to the vet we can get reimbursed for part of the cost. So the problem is: how do I track these reimbursements like I did in my last post?

# The Dirty Details

The whole problem is mostly contained in the very first transaction I have to log: paying the vet for their services. It's extra tricky because either my partner or I could pay for a vet visit.

If I pay for it, I end up with this transaction:

There's 2 high-level things being done here:

1. I'm buying half of a REIMB commodity that tracks the status of our reimbursement with the insurance company (this is just like the THERAPY commodity in my last post).
2. I'm noting that my partner owes me $19.00, because I paid for the service and they need to pay me back for half.

After the vet visit my partner will send me the half they owe me, which zeroes out their reimbursement account:

Now if instead my partner pays for the service, I'll pay them half through Venmo and we get a much simpler transaction:

In this case, they don't owe me any money, so all I need to worry about is buying half of a REIMB commodity.

Fortunately, we've now taken care of the hard stuff. The remaining transactions (which track the reimbursement through its various stages) are just like they were in the last post: