Child Transactions in Parent Register

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 1/20/2016 11:11 AM, John Morris wrote:
> Hi All,
>    Is there any way to make GnuCash show me all the child transactions in a parent register? I am keeping the books for a small nonprofit and we have received a donation earmarked for costumes. Since we only have one checking account, I deposited the check there, but I would like to see how much of the "costume fund" is left. I set up a child account of the checking account in GnuCash and have moved all the transactions related to costumes to that child account. Now my main checking account balance on the Accounts page matches the bank, but the register balance does not match because it does not show the transactions related to costumes.
>
>    Ideally, I would like to be able to see the balance and transactions related to just the costumes in one view and the balance and transactions related to the "general fund" (everything that is not costume related) in another window and all the transactions in another window so I can balance the checking account against the bank's numbers. Is that possible?
>
> Best,
> John
Your problem is in wanting to be able to deal with restricted or 
earmarked funds without having to do the necessary bookkeeping. It is 
your shortcut (having a simpler way to enter the transaction) that is 
causing the problem, so you want the program to "fix that" for you.

Look, I keep books for non-profits, this is a VERY common situation, 
restricted or earmarked funds. Let's ignore formally restricted funds 
for a moment (those use a liability account) and consider just informal 
earmarking.

1) When the money dedicated to the special project comes in, create a 
child account under checking to hold it. But do NOT use the child the 
way that you are doing it.
2) When an expense comes in for which use of these restricted funds are 
appropriate, instead of a simple transaction
       db  qualifying expense    $x
              cr   checking                               $x

     You have a split transaction, split on both sides
       db  qualifying expense     $x
       db  checking                      $x
                cr checking                               $x
                cr earmarked fund                   $x

       It isn't SIMPLY db expense and cr earmarked fund because while 
those two against checking appear to just cancel each other out, you 
want them BECAUSE THE SECOND (the cr) records the check number and you 
want that entry in the ledger. If you find a two way split transaction 
confusing or hard to enter (not trivially easy) then you could enter as 
two consecutive transactions.
        db  qualifying expense     $x
                cr checking                               $x

        db  checking                      $x << like a deposit >>
                cr earmarked fund                  $x << where the money 
for that "deposit" came from >>

3) Perhaps the best way to set this up is to have a parent "checking" 
(the entire account) and under that a child "unrestricted funds" (where 
deposits will be made, from which checks will be written, what you 
reconcile EXCEPT for the total in the account you include all the other 
child accounts holding earmarked funds. That isn't really much extra 
work, because in reconciling a checking account you are always adding 
and subtracting (checks written but not deposited) so no big deal to 
also be adding the reserved amounts.

Michael D Novack