Account Set-up

[Walt Pennington]

On Sun, 2004-02-29 at 16:09, Alan H. Lake wrote:
> In the set-up for my church's books, I have an account structure that
> looks something like this:
> Income
>     Contributions
>         Chang
>         Jones
>         Smith
>         Walters
> Assets
>     Current Assets
>         Checking Account
>             Building Fund
>             General Fund
>             Music
> and so forth.
> 
> It's obvious how one would use this structure to take a contribution and
> transfer it to one or more funds.  The problem comes when I wish to
> balance the checking account statement from the bank.  
> 
> On the Income side, I need to accumulate all of the contributions from
> each collection so that I can see each deposit amount before putting in
> into the different funds in the checking account. 

I am not sure I understand the question, but I believe you are asking,
how can we note contributions by contributor, and balance the checking
account.  An example would be contributions in the following amounts:

Loose Cash - $500
Chang - $750
Jones - $500
Smith - $250
Walters - $400 to the Building Fund ONLY


The entry would be:

BankAccount -General         $2,000   
BankAccount - Building Fund   $400
  Income:Chang                       $750
  Income:Jones                       $500
  Income:Smith                       $250
  BuildingFund:Walters               $400

This will create bank accounts that can be reconciled, and allow you to
record contributions during the year, and provide year end statements of
contributions.

If this does not answer your question, I apologize that I misunderstood.

> On the expenditure side, the money needs to be maintained in the
> separate funds in the checking account, but I need to have a register
> for the whole checking account so I can find (and clear) a given check.
> 

Could you provide more clarification and an example of the problem?  I
am not sure if you have one or several bank accounts, and why you cannot
find a check when you are reconciling the bank statement at the end of
the month.

It appears that you are trying to use only one bank account and earmark
funds within the account for a specific purpose.  If all of the money is
within one account, when you reconcile the account, only the active
checks will appear in the reconciliation.  

If you have one bank account and are using checks for different funds,
it may be easier to obtain bank accounts for the Building Fund and
Miscellaneous.

Walt