Help: Research group accounting

[Wm]

Mon, 6 Jul 2015 17:41:36 <7f97f2e6.7d33081.559aa1b0.f2c2f at 10g.pl> 
=?UTF-8?Q?J=C4=99drzej_Pe=C5=82ka?= <jedrzej.pelka at 10g.pl>

>Hello!

Hello, to you.  A fascinating query!

>There is a small research group, which runs various experiments on 
>human subjects. The subjects are paid for the amount of time they spent 
>participating. I wonder if it would be reasonable to use GnuCash to 
>track what the research group owes/pays/gets from the subjects.
>
>Detailed description of the "business logic" of the research group:

I will switch 1 and 2, I hope you see why.

>2. Each time a subject participates, she/he is credited an amount of 
>minutes. (I know that minutes can be defined as a custom "fund" in 
>GnuCash.)

People you owe things to are Creditors (Accounts Payable) which are a 
Liability of the Research Group (RG).

>1. There is a pool of registered subjects, each has a unique ID number. 
>(Should they be accounted as "employees" or rather as "customers"? Or 
>maybe "vendors"?)

I'm going to suggest Vendors is the better match as RG owes them.

>3. After a subject has collected a sufficient amount of minutes,

think of each subject's participation as an invoice sent to the RG 
increasing the balance the RG owes them

> they can come and withdraw their balance in form of cash (at a fixed 
>exchange rate e.g. 0,15 USD for each minute of experiment 
>participation).

pay creditor in the normal way, creating a negative asset (c.f. a bank 
account with an overdraft)

>The professor pays the subjects from his own pocket, collects signed 
>receipts and gets later reimbursed by the university.

income account into bank account settles "overdraft".

depending on how complicated the reimbursement process is you could set 
the university up as a debtor / accounts receivable / asset and produces 
invoices for them as a customer

>4. Alternatively, at her/his own wish, the subject may exchange part of 
>their balance for a volunteering certificate, stating they participated 
>for a given amount of time unpaid.

The RG would need a transaction to cancel their debt to the subject 
(Assets:Certificates Issued) to balance the project as a whole.

>I'm a beginner and this case of business is rather unusual compared to 
>most GnuCash tutorials. May somebody suggest a proper scheme for 
>accounting this?

I (and some other people here and elsewhere over time) have an interest 
in accounting for less common things.  Some of my models include ideas 
such as yours.

Let me know if my ideas above make sense to you and thank you for 
bringing an interesting issue to the table.


-- 
Wm...