how to account for application of donations ?

[Matthew Pounsett]

On 28 December 2016 at 06:45, __ <tereque at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can anyone advise how to set this up? I do not have to report in
> detail or each individual donation, but need to see the entire sum of
> funds that have been donated and what bills they have been used for
>
> There are probably other solutions, but one idea that comes to mind is
judicious use of sub-accounts.

I use sub-accounts to track money set aside for specific purposes.  For
example, I have an asset account that maps to my real bank account, but in
gnucash I have created subaccounts which I transfer funds into from the
parent account in order to set money aside for a specific purposes like a
vacation fund, and home repair fund.  You could do something like that in
order to track incoming donations, and then when you pay bills using
donated funds, make the transfer from that sub-account.  Do not set the
parent as a placeholder, and in your Accounts view you might want to add
the Balance column so you can see the difference between what's in the
parent account, and what is summed up from its child accounts.

If your donations all come in to your bank account, but you sometimes pay
bills using cash, then account for that with a transfer from your donations
sub-account to your cash.

If you also sometimes get donations in cash, then have a donations
subaccount for your cash asset as well.  Or, you might do that anyway just
to have a specific way to track donated funds that pass through your cash
asset.