How collect-in accounts work – Budgeting

How collect-in accounts workBudgetingYou know where fringes, supplements, extra costs and tax actually land in the budget, and why some accounts refuse to be picked as the place they land.When you define a wage fringe, a supplement or an extra cost, one field is **Collect In Budget Account**. That account is where the money appears in the budget.Tax has a field that looks the same and behaves differently — see [below](#tax-is-the-odd-one-out).Why the cost does not land on the account that caused itA social-security contribution caused by twenty wage accounts could be added invisibly to each of them. It is not, because the wage line would then no longer show the wage.Instead every contribution of that kind collects into one account — a "social security" line — where it can be seen, checked against what the authorities expect, and reported as a single figure.You create that account like any other. It becomes a collect-in account the moment a definition names it.The path the money takesTake a wage account split into Preparation, Shoot and Wrap, with a social-security fringe that applies to the Shoot phase only:1. The **base** is the total of the subaccounts you ticked for this fringe — here, Shoot alone. Preparation and Wrap are left out. 2. That base is multiplied by the **fringe percentage**. 3. The result lands in the **Collect In Budget Account** — say *1004 Social Security*. 4. From there it rolls up like any other account: into its group, its category, and the grand total.The wage account keeps showing the wage. Only the collect-in account grows, and it carries the contribution up into the group, the category and the grand total.An account with no subaccounts works the same way with one step fewer: its own total is the base.What changes once an account collects**It cannot have subaccounts.** Its value is the sum of what collects into it, so subdividing it would mean two things claiming to own the same number.**It can only collect one kind.** An account collecting tax cannot also collect fringes. Accounts already committed to the other kind are simply not offered in the list.The two warnings| Situation | What you are being asked | | ------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | The account already collects other calculations | Whether to add this one too — usually yes, that is what these accounts are for | | The account is not collecting yet but has a value of its own | Whether you really mean it — collecting here replaces the account's own calculation |Declining changes nothing; clearing the field never warns.Read the second one carefully. Choosing an account that already has its own quantity and price is almost always a mistake — it is easy to pick the wrong row from a long list, and the account then stops meaning what you entered.Why the account you are working on may be missingOpen Settings from inside an apply panel — that is, while working on a specific account — and that account is left out of the list, because a definition applied to an account that collects into itself would be circular.If you genuinely want that account to collect, open Settings from the toolbar instead.Tax is the odd one outTax's field is **Collect Remainder In Account**, and the difference is more than wording.A fringe always collects. **Tax usually collects nothing.** At a 100% refund — the normal case in most countries — there is no cost to collect and the field stays empty. It matters only below 100%, and then it collects the **shortfall**, not the charge.So if you applied a tax and cannot find it in a collect-in account, that is probably correct rather than broken.What tax does share with the others: an account collects **either** tax **or** fringe-family calculations, never both.Where they appear in the gridCollected amounts show as detail rows. One toggle decides whether they appear under the account that collects them or the account that caused them.Markdown