separating temporary project funding from company profit

[Daniel Drake]

Hi,

I'm using gnucash for managing finances of a small business. I'm new to 
accounting in a business context, but I do have a grip of the basics.


My question:

The company has received some funding for an in-development project. I 
filed this as a transfer from an income account to our "Current assets" 
bank account.

We have received an invoice for some IP that is part of this project. I 
filed this as a bill from a vendor into Liabilities-->Accounts payable. 
We are not going to pay this just yet, but will do soon.


The company has also received some profits from sales of stock from 
older, completed projects. These are represented as transfers from 
various income accounts to our "Current assets" bank account. (after 
that, a new bill is created in Accounts payable, because we pay our 
contractors a % of each sale. the remaining % is kept by the company as 
profits)


Is there an easy and clean way that I can get gnucash to separate the 
funding for the new project (which we anticipate spending in entirity) 
from the actual profits that are here-to-stay from the sales of stock? I 
basically want an easily accessible figure that shows me how much profit 
has been made, a figure not including the money which we anticipate 
spending on the new project.

Right now I can calculate this easily by hand, but with more projects in 
future this may become unreasonably complicated.

I tried modifying my accounting practice as follows: instead of 
receiving the project funding from an income account, I transferred it 
from a new liability account. However, this did not quite work out 
properly: once I then filed the IP invoice as a bill, that was also 
recorded under Accounts payable under liabilities -- hence that 
particular liability is now recorded twice and all numbers are off.

Any suggestions or comments?


Thanks for gnucash, it's excellent!
Daniel