Non-Profit Donations

[Derek Atkins]

Just keep in mind that the A/R Registers are not designed for manual
data input, and all the reports based on A/R will fail if you manually
input transactions into A/R.

-derek

Pablo Francesca <rshgeneral at yahoo.com> writes:

> Thank you for all your responses.  It was especially interesting when Hubert mentioned the use of A/R as a method of tracking pledges.  Although pledges aren't applicable in our situation, they certainly fit into the for-profit accounting structure of gc, and are handled in a specific way in fund accounting.
>
> I still think gc is clunky for non profit accounting, but it sounds like your Druid might bridge the reporting gap.
>
> --- On Wed, 4/28/10, Hubert Bahr <hab at hbahr.org> wrote:
>
> From: Hubert Bahr <hab at hbahr.org>
> Subject: Re: Non-Profit Donations
> To: "Pablo Francesca" <rshgeneral at yahoo.com>
> Cc: gnucash-user at gnucash.org, "Jean-David Beyer" <jeandavid8 at verizon.net>
> Date: Wednesday, April 28, 2010, 11:57 AM
>
>
>
>
>   
>   
> I actually have them set up as A/R type or an asset account.  This
> would certainly make more sense for a pledge and separate receipt
> situation, but still works for donation although it requires two
> transactions per donation.  One to record the purpose of the
> pledge/donation (sale) and one to record the payment.  In most cases I
> am receiving donations in clumps.  For example Sunday morning
> offerings.  I separate the donations into various groups depending on
> the designation and with one group that might have a single donation
> with splits.  I process all the donations per group as one transaction
> say for example  "Tithes and Offerings"  or "Haiti Relief" or  "Van
> fund"  I enter each donation as a charge split.  GC keeps a running
> total that is transfered as lump sum to the income spit designated
> account,  This takes care of the pledge portion.  Now to record the
> payment still within the same transaction I copy the lump amount as a
> transfer to a "undeposited funds" charge split.  I then enter each
> donation again as an income split.  The end result is that the income
> account shows one transaction for the total receipts(pledges) on that
> day, the cash (undeposited funds) account shows a transaction for each
> different source of income on that date, And each donor account shows
> both and invoice and payment on that date.  For my giving report I only
> want the invoice entries since it shows where the funds were applied
> (what was purchased).  After I make the deposit for that day the lump
> sum from the undeposited funds account to the Checking account.  At
> this time my A/R and Undeposited funds should show 0 balance, If not I
> have made a transcription error somewhere.
>
>
>
> I am hoping to create a druid for this to remove the double manual
> entry but an accounts visibility viewpoint this works for me.  I am
> also planning to create custom reports to eliminate the editing in a
> spreadsheet.  But until those are functional this is an improvement
> over what my predecessor was doing in Quickbooks.
>
>
>
> Hubert
>
>
>
> Pablo Francesca wrote:
>
>   
>     
>       
>         What account type is your Donations account? If it is an
> asset type, I'm not following your organizing method. If its an income
> type, it seems like your saying you have income accounts for donors and
> income accounts by donation type.  That seems even odder. Another
> possibility is that you have income sub accounts under each income
> donor account.  Is that what you are doing?
>
>         
>
> This would certainly allow for accurate donor reporting, but then it
> would seem to break reporting by donation type.  If this what you're
> doing, then I guess you would have export all the data an manipulate it
> in a spreadsheet.  I was trying to avoid that.
>
>         
>
>         
>           In my case I have a top level account
> Donations with a sub account for each donor.  I then have income or
> designated fund accounts for the various targets of giving.  I can then
> run a report on each donors account that lists all his giving with
> memos/account names to designate where his donations went.   Or I can
> run a report of all donors import to a spread sheet add carriage
> returns etc so I can bulk print.   My understanding is that the
> unstable version is better equipped to use Customer accounts to support
> this type of reporting, but I haven't tried it yet.  From an accounting
> viewpoint a donor is treated like customer.  The donor provides income,
> he receives a share of services for his donation,  ie he pays for part
> of the expenses and shares in the gratification of whatever works the
> NPO performs.  Yes there are special rules but change the name or
> titles on the reports they still look up data and accumulate it etc. 
> So far I have just ran a test case, and I still needed to tweak the
> reports in a spread sheet, but the data was all there.  I needed to
> Delete a column and add a total, but it still beat the method my
> predecessor was doing it.  For our donors we list each individual
> donation and the total.  We find this gives them more confidence, or
> lets them  cross check with their records.  Sometimes it results in
> making an additional donation to make up for one that they
> inadvertently missed.  We send out a midyear report as well as the
> year-end report.
>
> Hubert
>
>           
>
> Pablo Francesca wrote:
>
>> Based on my understanding of your reporting, I'm not sure how I
> can easily generate a donation report for each donor.  To be sure, an
> Income Report will list all my donor's contributions, but this is every
> donation.  I was thinking specifically of the need to fairly easily
> generate a donor report for he donor's tax purposes.  I thought about
> running an account report, and this would suffice if I only wanted to
> list my donations by donor. 
>
>> In the situation for this church, some donors will donate with no
> restrictions or expectations.  Some donations will be quid pro quo. 
> Suppose Bob the Donor makes a one time contribution of 100 and then
> later enrolls in a seminar for 200.  This seems like it requires a Bob
> income account under General Donations and a Bob income account under
> Seminar X. There doesn't seem to be any way to pull all of Bob's
> donations in one report without doing it manually.
>
>> 
>
>>   
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> clip
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-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available