- Reports

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 12/13/2016 3:44 AM, Christopher Lam wrote:
> Following on an earlier thread,
>
> > He said, don't bother Mike. Just produce the four reports (needed to 
> prepare the formal annual report) and export them. Balance Sheets for 
> the end of last period and this period and Revenue Statements (what a 
> non-profit calls P&L) for last period and this one.
>
> Let's assume US fiscal year dates - does this means you'll only 
> produce the following 4 reports for your accountant? No transaction 
> reports needed?
> - balance sheet 30 September 2015
> - balance sheet 30 September 2016
> - profit & loss 1 October 2014 to 30 September 2015
> - profit & loss 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2016
>
> I'm just trying to figure what everyone is presenting to their accountant.

OK, I will describe the process for preparing the annual report << that 
"lawyer/accountant" was another board member, and for a number of years 
he assembled those into the annual report (adding the fixed text and 
annotations). These days I do that.

A "normal" report for a non-profit is to show side by side the current 
period just ended along with the prior period. The "profit & loss" is 
titled "statement of revenues and expenses" since non-profits don't have 
profit or loss (just money coming in and money going out).

But yes, I simply run and then export TWO reports (for the period just 
ended) since the ones from the end of the prior period still exist 
(those were exported last time). I then open a "document" and copy in 
the data into the appropriate column, move things around to make them 
line up << an account might now exist that didn't before and one that 
used to exist might no longer exists >> This is the stage where I can 
remove lines that do not apply (remove unnecessary detail) and add the 
annotations for items to be noted with explanations. Finally I can do 
things like play with fonts and spacing to get page breaks in good 
places, etc.

That's the report for the board and public. Are you asking about other 
things like preparing the 990-EZ, MA state Form PC, deciding what 
1099-MISCs need to be done, etc. ? For those I would be using some of 
that detail level that was removed from the annual report << example --- 
a board wants to know "what did running our annual meeting cost this 
year compared to last?" and NOT "what part of that was the cost of 
sending out notices to the public?" but "printing and postage" is a line 
item on the 990/990-EZ.

Transaction reports? I would only be looking at an account at that 
detail if I suspected that in a category (say orchard prep) we had paid 
some farmer > $600 because he came several times to harrow, mow, etc. 
and so needed to do a 1099-MISC for that person. Otherwise, the only 
other category of person we pay for services would be interns, if any, 
and that would be on the raw "Income Statement" since I would have an 
account for each. Note that again this is the sort of detail that would 
be suppressed on the annual report. The board members might care "what 
did we pay our interns this year?" but NOT "how much to each one?" and 
"how much of each one's was pay an how much travel reimbursement?". The 
sort of detail I need to know for doing 1099-MISCs (was any intern over 
$600 in their PAY portion). If you had some "outside contractors" you 
made multiple payments to (like in our case, an intern), you PROBABLY 
created an account just for them, so you can see the total without going 
through transactions.

NOTE: In this I am describing just ONE of the organizations. Might be 
different for another, but I chose the most complex one. For example, 
some of the others pay nobody or did no printing and postage or perhaps 
are below the filing thresholds or I am just doing the bookkeeping for 
an event and passing the reports off to a national organization. Would  
be up to me to know what I would need to send << for example, WAS there 
printing and postage? Then you want that partitioned out.

I think you might be asking about the situation where you were just 
passing the whole task off to an accountant. In other words, you don't 
know what might be required in order to produce the annual reports, do 
the filings, etc. Yeah, I suppose then a great deal more would have to 
be exported for the accountant to look through but in that case the 
accountant should be telling you what he or she wants to see. Perhaps 
not in gnucash terms, but in standard accountantese << and then you can 
ask us here to translate that for you >>

Michael

Michael D Novack