Q: How to record a grant

Ben Stanley bds02@uow.edu.au
Mon, 04 Jun 2001 09:39:10 +1000


<jalapeno> Here's a silly accounting question:
<jalapeno> I'm the treasurer for a church...
<jalapeno> Let's say I get a grant for $500.00 for a specific purpose
<jalapeno> The money is deposited into the church bank account
<jalapeno> It is spent in smaller transactions over the course of the
following year or so
<jalapeno> How do I keep track of it?
<jalapeno> 1) open a new sub-account of the bank account? (makes it
difficult to reconcile the bank account)
<jalapeno> 2) create a new liability, started off by an amount equal to
the grant. Deposit the grant money into the bank account. Spending the
grant money reduces the liability.
<jalapeno> I'm doing 2), but it means I have to check the balance of the

bank account against my liabilities every time I write a cheque...
<jalapeno> But it does make it easy to reconcile the bank statements.
:-)

If there is a better way of doing it, I'd like to hear it.

I'd be interested in any way of automatically showing
assets - liabilities
so that I can see at a glance how much money I really have in the
bank... At the moment, I have to remember to check on the liabilities
accounts before I write any cheques.

Note that I have 2 different bank accounts, and a liability tree for
each one. When I say assets - liabilities, I mean that I must be able to

select the liabilites to offset against a particular bank account.

Ben.