Tracking profit and loss for events

[Ken Greenberg]

I am the new treasurer of a collectibles club with several hundred 
members, and I am considering using GnuCash for accounting. I am 
interested to hear about best practices from someone with a similar 
organization, mostly to see if GnuCash is the right tool for this.

Like any organization, we have income (membership dues) and expenses 
(printing newsletters). But we also put on about four trade shows a 
year. Each show has income (from admissions and selling trade tables) 
and expenses (food, rent, insurance, etc.) We need to be able to track 
each show's expenses and revenues separately. So while they use the same 
general accounts (e.g., checking) that will produce club-wide reports, 
we want to track each show as if it was a project or job.

GnuCash certainly has a concept of jobs (just as QuickBooks has 
projects) but they are associated with customers. Makes perfect sense if 
you are a building contractor, but for us the projects are for the club 
as a whole, not for one particular customer. In fact we don't have 
customers, but I think members map to customers pretty well since they 
are our only source of revenue.

I have mostly worked for fairly large companies (now retired) and am 
used to the idea of a profit-and-loss center within a company. For 
example, Audi is part of Volkswagen and contributes to its bottom line, 
but the profitability of Audi itself can be tracked. (OK, this is on a 
wildly different scale.) I would think each trade show could be thought 
of as a P&L center, and this would work. But does GnuCash handle this?

I can think of other examples where this sort of reporting is necessary. 
For example, an orchestra needs to see if each concert is profitable, as 
well as whether it made or lost money for the year.

So, how do others handle this? Any ideas greatly appreciated.