Tracking profit and loss for events

[Mike or Penny Novack]

> since I talked to my friend who is the treasurer of an orchestra and asked him how he managed
>such things. His answer is that he uses QuickBooks Pro, which allows him to
>tag individual transactions as being associated with an event - e.g.,
>"February 2013 concert." In QuickBooks, this is called a class. Once he has
>done that, he can produce a report of all transactions with that tag, as
>well as a report for the entire year of all transactions, tagged or not.
>This is much more convenient.
>
>Of course, the idea of keeping a separate file for each event is possible,
>provided there is a convenient way to do the roll-up. 
>
It's a matter of what report you want to be convenient. I'm on the 
financial committee of an org (and my wife on the board) that uses 
QuickBooks Pro. Yes, "class" allows you to prepare a small report just 
for an event, etc. But the price is that the main reports have all the 
details of the event and those separated into the income and expense 
areas so hard to see the net. Very confusing, especially when the nets 
might be dwarfed by the amounts.

The point is that for this orchestra, from the board's point of view, 
wouldn't they rather (for the treasurer's report) like to see just the 
nets of each concert (and then ask for the income/expense details of a 
specific concert if/f the net wasn't what was expected).

I'm not sure what you meant in the second part. It may be a matter of 
being familiar or unfamiliar with how you would actually do this. For 
example, a small organization is unlikely to have separate savings 
accounts for each and every "fund" so the treasurer presumably would 
have to learn how to handle that, do the various transfers between 
accounts (children of the "real" account).

Michael

PS --- QuickBooks is a commercial product. Because of this it will give 
its customers what they want whether or not that is a good idea from the 
viewpoint of proper accounting.

PSS -- the defect (confusing main reports) can be handled by the 
treasurer treating the reports from the software package as "raw data" 
and editing that into a report to be presented to the board. You think 
that would be less work than separate books? (with comparatively few 
transactions between them).