Farm & Community Accounting - Any experience?

[Jason Dunham]

I am in a similar situation, which I've been posting about recently, the
accounting for a shared vacation house.  Despite the fact that it doesn't
seem to have much in common with a communal farm, I believe the accounting
issues are very similar.  We have partners, and some income and expenses are
shared equally, and others may not be.

I have chosen the following set of accounts (edited a bit for clarity).  I
think it's going to work pretty well.  However I am not an accountant, and I
just got started, so I can give no assurance of this being useful or
sufficient.

Assets
  Real Estate
  Furniture
  Equipment
  Current Assets
     Bank Account
     Accounts Receivable
        Partner 1, 2, 3 (separate subaccounts)
Equilty
  Partner 1, 2, 3
Income
  Rentals
  Interest
  Mortgage Payments received
     Partner 1, 2, 3
  Regular Assessments
     Partner 1, 2, 3
  Special Assessments
     Partner 1, 2, 3
   Individual Assessments
     Partner 1, 2, 3
Liabilities
   Mortgage
     Partner 1, 2, 3
   Reimbursables
     Partner 1, 2, 3
Shared Expenses
   Bank Charges
   Insurance
   Repairs
   Utilities
   Taxes
   etc.
Separate Expenses
   Partner 1
      Mortgage interest
      Optional services
   Partner 2
      Mortgage Interest
      Optional Services
   Partner 3
      Mortgage Interest
      Optional Services.

At the top level, I have separate trees for equally shared expenses versus
unequally shared.  You may not need this, but it makes it easy to explain
how I set the budget based on those shared expenses.  Once the budget is
made, partners are charged "regular assessments" based on the budget, and
it's always equal for all partners.  If there is other money needed (i.e.
the budget is not suffficient), then extra money is charged as a "special
assessment" but it's still always equal.  If there is an assessment that for
whatever reason is not equal, that goes under "individual assessments".

Money spent in the form of an individual's expenses to be reimbursed is a
liability, but then the liabilities are transferred into accounts receivable
as a credit.

Each partner has an accounts receivable (AR) account.  This is how they know
how much to pay.  The various assessments and mortgage payments are positive
("invoices") on that account.  Money paid in is entered as a payment,
usually increasing the bank account.  Reimbursements are also payments to
AR, and they zero out the partner's liability account.  Note that the
liabilities are not liabilities OF the partners but liabilities TO the
partners.

I started out using the business/customer feature to track and report on the
AR accounts but I found it unsuitable.  What is missing is a transaction
report for the individual AR accounts, but with a starting and ending
balance.  I am working on it, but I'm occupied with other matters, so if you
beat me to it or want to share ideas please let me know.

For the separate expenses, I inverted the structure so that each partner has
a separate tree.  I haven't figured out whether that is useful or not.

Let me know if that helps or if you have more questions or improvements to
suggest.

Jason