Research Group Accounting

[David Cousens]

Hi Jedrzej,

1. Whether you treat the subjects as employees or vendors really depends 
on the legal position re casual employment in your university/country 
but it is most likely easiest to treat them as vendors (suppliers of 
services). They are definitely not customers however as you do not 
supply goods or services to them.

2. I have no experience with having an account set up with units of 
minutes but if you do know how to do this or someone else can advise you 
how to, you probably need to set up a "Liability:Accounts Payable 
Minutes:name" account for each of your volunteers to record the time in 
minutes and a corresponding "Liability:Accounts Payable USD:name" 
account for each volunteer in USD and use the exchange rate to convert 
one to the other with a transaction when the requisite number of minutes 
has been accumulated for those volunteers who wish to be paid in cash. 
(substituting the volunteers name for name in the above and below).

3. You could then set up an Expense Account for each of the volunteers 
"Expenses:Volunteer Payments Minutes:name" and the corresponding 
"Expenses:Volunteer Payments USD:name" account for those who are paid in 
cash.

When your volunteers attend you would record a transaction which debits 
the  "Liability:Accounts Payable Minutes:name" account and credits the
"Expenses:Volunteer Payments Minutes:name" account with the requisite 
number of minutes.

When a volunteer accumulates enough minutes to qualify for the cash 
payment ( for those who want to be paid cash) you would have to record a 
transaction which credits the "Liability:Accounts Payable Minutes:name" 
account and debits the "Liability:Accounts Payable USD:name" account 
using the exchange rate (assuming this is possible).

A corresponding transaction which debits the "Expenses:Volunteer 
Payments Minutes:name" account and credits the "Expenses:Volunteer 
Payments Minutes:name" account using the same exchange rate will be 
needed at the same time to convert the expense account to USD.

When the volunteer is paid you would have to credit the 
"Liability:Accounts Payable USD:name" account by the amount of the 
payment and debit an asset account "Assets:Accounts Receivable:name" 
account in the professors name to record the payment of the volunteer by 
the professor (multiple accounts for each if multiple professors may 
make payments).

The final step is when the university reimburses the professor in which 
case the "Assets:Accounts Receivable:name" account in the professors 
name is credited by the amount of the payment and an "Asset:Bank 
Account:name" in the professors name would be debited by the amount of 
the payment.

You could also possibly record the issue of certificates by using a 
conversion rate from minutes to certificates instead of USD and 
repeating the above with  "Liability: Accounts Payable Cert:name" and
"Expense:Volunteer Payments Cert:name" substituted for the USD accounts 
with corresponding transactions to record the accumulation of enough 
minutes for issue of a certificate.

If you were required to present detailed records to the university then 
the above should work but are you sure a spreadsheet tab for each 
volunteer would not be sufficient? The above procedures should satisfy 
the generally accepted accounting principles but it would be advisable 
to consult your university finance department re the detail they require 
and any compliance issues or jurisdictional issues which may apply.

David