Custom vs Development? (Donor processing)

[Hubert Bahr]

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
> Hubert Bahr wrote (in part):
>> I am using Gnucash to track my Churches Income and Expenses.
>
>> Donation transaction that doesen't require entering the amount twice.  
>
> I am treasurer of the local Quaker Meeting (very much like a church: 
> treated as such by legal authorities). We certainly accept donations.
>
> I have a line-item for each member and I need to make only one entry 
> for a donation. It is "split" (not in the sense of GnuCash) in that it 
> has a line for the donor and a second for what is to be done with the 
> donation; i.e., whether it goes into our capital account or our 
> operating account. (We actually have only one account at the bank, but 
> we treat it as two because there are restrictions on what the money in 
> the capital account may be used for.)
>
> So when I get a contribution from a member, I go to 
> Income:GiftsReceived:DonorName
> and enter the transaction. I tab to the field where the income goes 
> and enter the amount. I then press the down-arrow key once and the tab 
> key once and enter the value again as to which account it goes to.
>
> Is your request for a different auto-fill operation? When I select a 
> given donor, it pops up the last contribution he made and if it is the 
> same amount as before, I just diddle the date and check number and 
> Enter it. If it is a different amount, I have to enter both. It cannot 
> really enter both fields because the donor may have designated part of 
> it (this time) to go into capital and operating lines (a split -- this 
> time in the sense of GnuCash), or just to go into a different account 
> than before.
>
In my case I use a split where I enter all donations into an income 
(tithes and offerings) (or specialized offerings) account where each 
donor is a separate split and it auto fills with the donor's account 
with normally one to three keystrokes.  This is from a donations top 
level (accounts receivable) account with all subaccounts selected 
register.  Then the lump sum is transfered to the income account.  I 
then also move this lump sum into my undeposited account where I collect 
all payments prior to deposit.  To balance this I need to again enter 
all donor's and their amounts.  The net result on the donor's account is 
zero balance.  They used the Churches services and paid for them.  The 
amount was placed in the appropriate account as the donor's requested 
and then the funds were accumulated.  The funds are then transferred in 
bulk with a single transaction from the undeposited to a checking 
account once the deposit is transferred from the safe to the bank.  

I agree that I need balancing entries for each of these.  However, there 
are some constants that could be automated, for "paid for at time of 
purchase transactions"  The date is constant the purchaser is constant.  
The cost is constant. The holding account is constant.  Now it just 
takes double entry of the purchaser and price.  I would like to be able 
to provide name, amount and designated product (category) and have all 
entries required to balance the accounts made.  I see the need to do 
these separately when the date of purchase and the date of payment are 
different, but for user friendliness I do not see the need to make each 
of these entries manually.    In this day and age I see many 
sales/donations done with this type of transaction.  The buyer uses 
cash/credit card/check to pay for the  services/product at the time of 
order.  In many cases where you have a lot of repeat customers you want 
to keep track of their purchases.  I really like NewEgg for  example 
because I can look up every purchase I ever made from them, yet each 
transaction was paid  at time of purchase.  

What I envision is a druid where I enter product account, and deposit 
account, memo and date and then create the list of (donor, donation 
pairs) that then this druid updates all the appropriate accounts.  I do 
this for each of the different product accounts ( tithes,  special 1, 
special 2 etc.)  I will still have some donations that will have splits  
listed with each donation.  What I could use is some pointers to various 
elements of GNUcash that might provide features that could be adapted to 
this purpose.
>> Billing and Payment as one transaction, again not requiring double 
>> entry.
>>
> It seems to me that GnuCash _is_ a double-entry bookkeeping system. As 
> such, it needs both entries. If you leave one out, the other half of 
> the transaction goes into a special account (I seem to have two: 
> Orphan-USD and Imbalance-USD. Both have a balance of $0.00). I do not 
> know which is used for this, since I have no entries in either account.
>