Summarizing annual donations to charity

[Jean-David Beyer]

On 12/29/2014 09:56 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> Thinking about summarizing data for tax preparation - in particular,
> deductible donations to charity.
> 
> I can create an annual report for that expense account, with details and
> totals by month and year.
> 
> What I'd really prefer would be annual totals by Description...
> - Charity A - $$$
> - Charity B - $$$
> etc.
> 

What I do is have an expense account called Charity that I use in the
normal way.

To get the report you want, I run a "Transaction Report" with the start
date at the start of the tax year (For me right now, I use 2014 January
1) and end date at the end of the tax year (For me right now, I use 2014
December 31). I select ONLY the Charity expense account, and sort on
Description for the primary key, and Date for the secondary key. I sort
both ascending, and do not let it do a subtotal.

The reason I sort on Description is that I sometimes make more than one
contribution to the same charity, and want these together. I do not know
how to subtotal the amounts for items with the same Description, so I do
that manually when using TaxAct for my taxes.

Here are my first few entries for this year. Numbers fudged.

> Date	        Num     Description	Memo/Notes	    Amount
> 2014-08-23	0123	American Friends Service Committee $xxx.00
> 2014-12-28		Amnesty International		    $yy.50




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