Profit-centre accounting?

[Jan Steinman]

Thanks, Liz, Derek, and Mike! You guys are awesome!

Now I have top-level things like "Eggs" with both "Eggs Sold" (Income) and "Chicken Feed" (Expense) underneath, which gives me a roll-up and an instant understanding that I'm not gonna get rich farming. :-(

Mike, I spent hours on the phone with Intuit, and they couldn't even figure out what I wanted, let alone how to do it. The best they could do was suggest enabling "Classes" and tracking profit centres that way. (Ugh.)

I guess I never tried Income nor Expense because of the cognitive dissonance of picking an arbitrary one of two opposites. But if I think of "Income" and "Expense" as just different categories of (possibly negative) equity, it's much easier to understand. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

Jan

> From: Liz <edodd at billiau.net>
>> 
> I have my GST set up this way. Can't tell you off hand how I did it,
> but Gnucash never complained
> 
> From: "=?utf-8?B?RGVyZWsgQXRraW5z?=" <derek at ihtfp.com>
> 
> The top level needs to be an income or expense account, not cash.

> From: Mike or Penny Novack <stepbystepfarm at mtdata.com>
> 
> Yes as far as income and expense accounts are concerned.
> 
> All you have to do is go back to the earlier concept that both income 
> and expense accounts are both temporary accounts of fundamental type 
> equity. The only difference between them is that income accounts are the 
> ones that normally have a credit balance and expense accounts the ones 
> that normally have a debit balance.
> 
> In other words, pick EITHER (let's say you pick "income"). You probably 
> will want to turn off the "user friendly" column titles going back to 
> the old fashioned "debit" and "credit".
> 
> So for project one, under "Income" you have a placeholder account 
> "project one revenues" and under that two placeholder accounts "project 
> one income" and "project one expenses" (account of type INCOME). Under 
> each of these you put the accounts for the different project one income 
> and expenses respectively. Remember, even though defined as type income 
> the latter WILL be expenses because your transactions there will be 
> debits (equivalent to a negative income amount).
> 
> Is that enough help? << BTW. this would have worked under QuickBooks too >>
> 
> Michael D Novack

:::: You know what? What makes our economy grow is energy. And Americans are used to going to the gas tank (sic), and when they put that hose in their, uh, tank, and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on, and I don't want somebody to tell me I gotta change my way of living to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we've worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it, and if we're going improve (sic) our standard of living, you have to consume more energy. -- Chuck Grassley
:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality Co-op ::::