Multiple Files

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 3/15/2016 12:02 AM, E Rosenberg wrote:
> Michael -
>
> Thanks.
>
> Big School..
>
> Let us say that it has three accounts, Maintenance, Tuition, Student Activities.
>
> It wishes to see the accounting for each of the accounts and to have
> the accounts combined into one account.  It wishes tjo see Income,
> Expenses for all four accounts. accounts.
>
> TIA
>
> Ethan
OK, now for the next question (answer will help us advise)

Wants to see (in the "main books") those income and expense transactions 
individually or just summarized? To use Maintenance as an example, would 
those at the top level handling the financial affairs of the school want 
to see each transaction for an order of wall washing detergent or just 
the summary total? << and only if there were a question about "why are 
we spending so much on cleaning supplies" ask for a report on the details >>

Before making up your mind how to proceed, you might look at an example 
of "subsidiary books" like "petty cash". This would have been common in 
the old days, a main set of books dealing with the organization as a 
whole but subsidiary books keeping track of the details so that the main 
books weren't cluttered with them (and errors, in the old days not 
uncommon, kept more isolated, thus easier to find and correct).

There is a price to pay, the extra transactions connecting the books 
(bringing the totals into the main books and transferring replenishment 
funds, etc.) But that sort of thing would have been done perhaps just 
monthly, relatively low volume.

Take Tuition for another example. You would want to have a level of 
detail there as to who has paid their tuition, who still owes ("customer 
data"). But the Board of the school would only be interested in things 
at the level of "total tuition income", "amount of tuition unpaid and 
owing", etc. and not the name/address of each student who still owes.

I am NOT saying that you can't specify reports running against a unified 
set of books to produce only the level of detail wanted. Just that you 
need to weigh the work alternatives, simpler reports vs the work of 
monthly or quarterly adjustments between a primary set of books and 
subsidiary books.

Michael

PS: There are also questions about "security". Who is going to be doing 
the work? If all on one bookkeeper/treasurer, no difference. But if 
different people, then you need to ask things like "why should the 
person who is maintaining the Tuition books have access to the 
Maintenance books or be able to see who is getting paid how much in 
Payroll?" If kept separated, only the head bookkeeper/treasurer having 
access to all (does the adjustments/transfers) then it is easy to 
restrict access by file.