Setting up GNUcash for an association

[Bob Smits]

On October 27, 2008 07:07:09 pm Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> >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). 

Why not? Unless (boy you guys have weird categories) your donors are in 
multiple categories themselves the total for John Smith, an "unrestricted" 
donor can be found just by looking at his account under income/donations/John 
Smith.

I think part of the problem here is that you are assuming that everyone who 
does this needs all these multiple categories when in reality, we don't. All 
I need to do is keep track of the total donations from each person, and in my 
case they're all simply contributors. 

> 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".

But that wasn't what the original poster asked - you're the one introducing 
all these irrelevant (to 90 % of the world) considerations. WE don't give a 
hoot about the IRS and what they want in a foreign country.  

> 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.

Gnucash works just fine for me in my applications. I used it to keep track of 
about $70,000 in donations over 5 weeks recently from 800 donors. It is not, 
of course, the only documentation I use in being ready for my audit. But it 
does work just fine for my accounts.