how to account for application of donations ?

[Anita Graves]

I have a question which is also related to donations and how to record them.  

I am the treasurer of a religious organization.  I receive contributions of amounts which are actually given in lieu of reimbursements for expenses (like cleaning the meeting venue, etc.)  These are exactly the same as cash transactions:  For instance, the custodian of the building asks for cash to reimburse her for paying  the cleaning lady, but instead decides to make that her contribution to the local fund.  I think this could be a single one-line transaction:  

Income : (Contributions) in lieu of reimbursement for cleaning expense  >  Expense : Cleaning the Center 

wherein I pretend I give her cash to reimburse her for the cleaning, and she hands it back to me as her contribution to the local fund.

Am I wrong in this very simple way to handle these kinds of contributions?

Thank you for your help,
Anita

> On 30 Dec 2016, at 8:40 PM, Matthew Pounsett <matt at conundrum.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.
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