Keeping track of sales and expenses for a specific craft show

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 2/7/2018 12:22 PM, C M Reinehr wrote:
> Ravenkwill,
>
> I would suggest setting up your chart of accounts to record the 
> revenues & expenses and then use the notes field of each entry to 
> identify the specific craft show. Later, you can then use the notes 
> field as a filter when running profit & loss reports, or specific views.
>
> CMR 
  And I (putting on my "business analyst" hat for a moment) would ask a 
number of questions about the information desired to be answered BEFORE 
discussing "how to implement".

a) What is the volume of transactions for each fair? How likely the same 
fair to be attended for a number of years (before being able to decide 
whether THAT ONE with while)

b) To what extent want to be able to report the totals of certain 
expenses that can be fair related but also not. Thus taking just hotels 
for an example, might also use on vacations.

The point is, there can be multiple WAYS of doing these things, reports 
with fancy filters can extract information, BUT there are other 
considerations like clutter in main books, likelihood of data entry 
items < if you have under "hotels" a child for each event, can 
accidentally stick a transaction to the wrong one >   The which way 
easiest, which way less error prone, which way nothing special to do, 
which way less duplication of effort entering data, etc. choices cannot 
be intelligently made until these things have been considered. There are 
trade offs.

Michael D Novack

PS: Some examples might help. Thus, an organization of which I was 
treasurer was going to host the annual gathering for the organization. 
The event was going to have it's own bank account and for a period of 
two months there would be hundreds of transactions related to the event 
and then nothing ever again (or at least not for many years when the 
local might again host the national gathering). That was sort of a no 
brainer for choosing the "separate set of books" solution.  Why?
1) There would be very few transactions between the (local) 
organization's books and the event books.
2) No special reports (special filters) would  be needed.
3) Would be a great deal of "clutter" in the local's books << and yes 
you can hide that, but why have to hide >>
4) The national organization's treasurer would need access to the books 
(of the event)
BTW, take a close look at that one. Suppose what your org did (as a 
major activity) was put on events for other organizations. Do you not 
see that "separate books" would make it a LOT easier to show the 
treasurer's of these organizations JUST the data which belonged to them,.