Addition of non-profit accounts

[Hubert Bahr]

I am also keeping books for a non-profit organization.  A church.  I 
eventually plan on developing some druids to deal with donor's as my 
present method works but I could save about half the work by 
automation.  I also hope to modify some reports so I do not have to do 
as much cut and paste in the spreadsheet.  After you get use to 
customizing the built in reports and saving them under a new name, you 
will find  that many of them are already functional.  When you find 
things specific you are having problems with, share your questions.  
2.3.12 has more built in reports and better check writing capabilities.  
I use 2.2.7 for data entry but use 2.3.12 for report generation and 
check writing.  My basic system doesn't have all the libraries for 
2.2.9, and everything is beta software with 2.3.12 so I don't count on 
it for permanent entries. 
Hubert

Mike or Penny Novack wrote:
> jpiapupstbc wrote:
>
>> We hope that the developers will include some accounts designed for
>> non-profit organizations, as well as making the reports more 
>> customizable
>> for NPOs. Since NPO stakeholders do not typically require B/S and P&L
>> especially if the NPO is a small one, customizable reports will do 
>> better
>> for us. Thanks.
>>  
>>
> That's odd. Certainly need to be able to produce THOSE reports for our 
> organizations. What exactly do you mean? For example, how would you be 
> able to show whether you had to file a 990, could file a 990-EZ, or 
> could just file a 990-N electronic postcard without the Statement of 
> Revenues  (aka Income Statement) or assets (Balance Sheet -- in this 
> case the same name used). And anybody we ask for a grant might ask to 
> see those reports.
>
> 1) Yes, not CALLED the same thing (traditional for a non-profit to 
> use  different names for the reports).
> 2) Final form of presentation different (traditional to present the 
> reports for two consecutive periods, current and previous).
>
> I have not addressed either (didn't create custom reports) as told not 
> to bother by the accountant person who prefers using his own favorite 
> editor. It isn't just a little bit of reformatting. You'd need the 
> capabilities of an editor to be adding notes to the report. Every 
> amount that is "unusual" needs a notation.
>
> Now some things a non-profit could use/need GnuCash doesn't do. But 
> that is more because not actually part of double entry bookkeeping 
> which only allows ONE hierarchy of accounts. Thus it would be nice to 
> also have " based upon donors" (for doing any necessary donor 
> accounting) without having to enter twice but that's essentially 
> "quadruple" instead of "double" and specialized systems would probably 
> solve that by separate books and "feeds" between the systems (the sort 
> of thing they used to pay me to design -- I'm from the world of BIG 
> financial systems).
>
> Michael D Novack
>
> PS -- there are parts of this question that I really don't understand. 
> What could have possibly been meant by "include some accounts for 
> non-profit organizations"? The built in accounts are just to get those 
> with zero bookkeeping experience started. Normally you ignore those 
> and just create whatever chart of accounts suits your organization.
>