Setting up GNUcash for an association

Mike or Penny Novack stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com
Mon Oct 27 22:07:09 EDT 2008


>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.

Michael


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