Setting up GNUcash for an association

[Cam Ellison]

Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
>> You can do all this in Gnucash. Just add under donations accounts like 
>> income/donations/unrestricted/name, for example. 
>>  
>>
>>     
> Bob, I think you are missing the point I was trying to make. Your 
> example is perfect.
>
> What I was saying is that you can't (in one set of double entry books, 
> the application irrelevant) group the same accounts in multiple ways. 
> Suppose you did what you suggest here. You can get the total 
> "donations", the total "unrestricted donations" (and presumably the 
> total "restricted donations", etc.) but you can't now get the total for 
> a donor (a particular name). The IRS doesn't care whether the donations 
> made by person X were restricted or not, just whether or not came to 
> over $250 total for the year. Similarly when figuring for the periodic 
> 501c3 status reporting where you want the donors grouped as either 
> "non-qualified" (insiders and fat cats) or "general public". For 
> different purposes you want the accounts to have different parents, a 
> different "chart of accounts".
>
> An account can have only one parent -- and again that's not specifically 
> GnuCash but a "chart of accounts" matter.
>
> I was in no way shape or form suggesting that GnuCash couldn't/shouldn't 
> be used for each of the multiple sets of books/sub books. Although in 
> this instance, since double entry accounting isn't needed for "donor 
> accounting" perhaps overkill.
>
>   
Just to stir the pot a bit:
The grouping should usually only be an issue when it comes to preparing 
reports.  Using the memo fields to indicate donor name, and/or whether a 
donor is restricted or not, should be sufficient.  Generating a 
transaction report or something similar, and then converting it to a 
spreadsheet, or dumping it into a database and converting it that way, 
should allow you to sort or otherwise organize the data.  Neither the 
auditors nor the accountants are going to muck around in GnuCash, even 
if they use it regularly: they generate reports and use spreadsheets.  
Consistency and proper labeling should be enough.

Cam


-- 
Cam Ellison  Ph.D.  R.Psych. #01417

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