Hello, I'm not particular interested in tracking each individual expense but I do once a month update my ledger to reflect all of my bank and brokerage accounts. I do however want to keep track of money owed or certain expenses like medical expenses.
Let's say I pay my expenses from credit card or via my bank directly. I don't keep track of my credit card accounts because they're too noisy and transient. And if I pay a medical expense via my bank account then it's either already reflected in my balances or will be - I'm not sweating it either way.
For tracking medical expenses and reimbursements I have a medical.ledger file that has entries like:
2025-08-29 * medical payment to doctor ; Aug Bill $1100
expenses:doc_a $1100
assets:insurance:receivable (-$1100*0.8)
equity:insurance:outofpocket (-$1100*0.2)
2025-09-18 * Deposit Mobile Banking ; reimbursement
assets:insurance:receivable $880
equity:insurance:reimbursement
and this appears to balance but any thoughts are appreciated on how to improve it.
What I'm trying to grapple with is if I have a non-reimbursable charge like a no-show or something as part of my bill. I guess I can either split it out into individual transactions but I would like to understand how I could book this as part of a large transaction.
2025-12-05 medical payment to doctor ; Dec (Paid $875)
expenses:doc_a $550
expenses:doc_a:no-show $275
assets:insurance:receivable -$440
equity:insurance:outofpocket -$110
2025-09-18 * Deposit Mobile Banking ; Reimbursement
assets:insurance:receivable $440
equity:insurance:reimbursement
but the above doesn't balance because of where to book the no-show against? I don't want to comingle it with my insurance because it's neither reimbursable nor counts towards any max spend. I can't book it against my bank or credit card because the original payment of $825 is already there. Should I just split it out and book it separately? I think the downside to that is when I'm combing through certain expenses I'll need to be cognizant of some 825 bank charge matching against a 550 and 275 charges.