GnuCash for Non-profit FUND based accounting ? olpc $100 laptop & GnuCash?

[Dale Alspach]

Our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate uses Quickbooks Pro for  its
accounting. There is nothing in this program that is special for fund
accounting. The point is to set up the chart of accounts for fund
accounting. Generally that means that expense accounts are repeated. We use
a numerical scheme: accounts numbered 5000-5999 are program expenses,
7000-7999 are management expenses, 8000-8999 are fundraising.
In the chart of accounts there are three postage accounts: 5350, 7350 and
8350. The same for any other general office expense.
Some things do not need to be repeated. Fundraising and management
do not have house construction expenses so those accounts are only in the
5000 range.

If you already have a set of accounts for fund accounting in the other
package, you should be able to just duplicate that in gnucash. On the other
hand if your current system does the allocation in an internal fashion,
then I would just triple the chart of accounts with one for each type of
expense. As you use it you may find that some accounts never get entries.

The tricky part of fund accounting is actually the allocation
and that is not a function of the software but the person at the keyboard.

Dale Alspach