What's an account called that always balances to 0?

Question

I use a pretty standard double-entry system in GnuCash (Income/Expenses, Assets/Liabilities). With my wife going back to school this fall, I did something in my accounting that I haven't done before: I created a "holding" account, and I want to know what the proper terminology is. The university has several charges (various fees, tuition, etc), and we pay it several different ways (multiple loans and checking). Instead of dividing up the expenses with the assets/liabilities in an arbitrary way, I created this "holding" account that acts as an intermediary. So the funds from assets/liabilities go into that account and funds move from that account to the expenses; the "holding" account always ends up with a balance of 0. I like how it ended up: there aren't any arbitrary divisions, and the "holding" account is useful because it matches the university's statements of our account (from their perspective). I'm thinking about repeating this pattern in some other areas (specifically, the annoying way my work handles partial expense reimbursements). But what should I call it, and what kind of account is this, really? Right now it's just a "liability" on the books, but it could be anything.

Answer 1

Well a liability means that the university owes an obligation to someone or vendor. Would you say this is true in how you are treating your expenses?

I say that it is a type of exchange, one which it is meant to be zeroed out at some point. An example of an exchange is a bank transfer account from one bank to another.