[GNC] Questions on how best to setup a non-profit account in gnucash

[Adrien Monteleone]

Larry,

We can’t offer accounting advice here. You’d need to speak to a local CPA who is familiar with your jurisdiction and optimally one familiar with non-profits to help you set up your account tree.

Beyond that, we can help with how to accomplish the various things you want with respect to GnuCash.

I’ll address other items in-line below.

> On Aug 8, 2019, at 11:24 AM, Larry Wagner <larrywagner0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I would like some comments about how one would set up gnucash for a non-profit.
> 
> Here are some of the specifics:
> 
> We hold 3 different types (categories) of dances:
> 
> 1) F&F dances - those sponsored by our club (~15 dances per year)
> 2) DF dances - those we share sponsorship with another club (~5 dances per year)
> 3) JBO dances - those sponsored jointly with yet another club (~2 dances per year)
First, GnuCash does not have a categorization or tagging function. You are limited to accounts. (but there are creative work arounds)

> 
> General expenses for the dances are:
> i) venue costs
> ii) Square Dance caller costs
> iii) Round Dance cuer costs
> iv) advertisement costs
> v) miscellaneous expenses (decorations, etc)
> 
> Dance income
> i) Door donations
> ii) 50/50 ticket proceeds

These would simply be setup as their respective expense and income accounts

So for this simple example you’d have something like:

Expenses
Expenses:Venues
Expenses:Callers
Expenses:Cuers
Expenses:Advertising
Expenses:Miscellaneous

Note, I wouldn’t get carried away with using the Miscellaneous account as a ‘dump bucket’ for ‘everything else’. You’re going to find you will want more fine-grained reporting later on. Only use Miscellaneous for things that truly are, or that are very small and rare one-off transactions.

You already know ‘decorations’ is something you’ll be spending money on and may need to track. You’ll likely want it to be its own expense category.

For the Income accounts something like:

Income
Income:Door Donations
Income:Ticket Proceeds
> 
> How should the accounts (and reports) be setup to provide the following:
> 
> a) breakout and total expenses for each of the 5 expense categories listed above
> b) breakout and total income for each of the 2 income categories listed above

Not sure what you mean by ‘breakout’, but a standard Income Statement/P&L will show you the income & expenses in your book in one report. (you could also make separate reports if you like)

If you want a detailed transaction list, both the Transaction Report and Account Report might be useful here.

> c) a breakout of the income and expenses for each individual dance, regardless of the dance category
> d) a breakout of the income and expenses for each dance category

Again, not sure of the reference to ‘breakout’ but the Transaction Report could possibly be used here. While there is no extra category level or tagging system in GnuCash, you can mimic this with some careful planning.

Pretty much any field in a transaction can be used as a filter for reports. Some likely fields to use for placing your dance category names and individual dance event names might be the Description, Note, or Memo depending on your needs. Description is usually used as ‘payee’ or ‘payor’ but can also be an occurrence or event, especially if the concept of payee/payor doesn’t quite fit with the particular transaction. The Memo field is a good place to put info about a specific split. The Note field is a good place to put info about the entire transaction. (you have to have Double Line Mode turned on to see the Note field)

There are also account tree schemes where some people create parent accounts for each category and then duplicate the needed accounts under each. Others will keep the main accounts as-is and then make sub-accounts under each representing each category. Both methods are going to be tedious and have limitations. If you can manage using field information and filters, I’d go that route.

Keep in mind, even with this workaround, you still might not get exactly what you want out of a GnuCash report. In that case, get it as close as you can, then export or copy/paste the report data to a spreadsheet and refine it there.

> e) a breakout of the income and expenses for all dance categories combined

That should be the same as the Income Statement/P&L.
> 
> I don't have a background in accounting so some of the terms are not familiar, but I think I can better communicate what I am thinking by considering the following:
> 
> a) Jobs (tasks) - All individual dances, which need to fall under one of the three dance categories listed above

Sorry, ‘Jobs’ in GnuCash are not like this. The feature is more like ‘Purchase Order’. So you can’t use it as a categorization tool.
> b) Vendors - All callers and cuers
Sure, as well as any other suppliers you pay expenses to. Note that not every place you spend money needs to be a vendor, just the ones that will send you bills. A trip to the local dollar store or supermarket would just be a regular transaction and doesn’t need to involve the Business Features. (unless you have an AR account with them and they invoice you periodically instead of paying per trip)

> c)  Customers are the dance categories to which each dance is assigned
I don’t see how that would work. Customers are entities who ‘buy’ from you that you send invoices to. (the flipside relation of Vendors)

See above about categorization workarounds.
> 
> I see the Jobs (individual dances) being comparable to the default Checking Account, where it would show a profit or loss from the income and expenses assigned to them.
Not really - see above about ‘Jobs’. The Checking Account should be an account in the tree.

> 
> I see the individual vendors (callers and cuers) being Expense Sub-Accounts, along with the venue, advertisement, etc. expenses.
You probably don’t need individual accounts for each caller and cuer or for each venue, etc. Just general expense accounts for each *type* of expense. (you wouldn’t create a food expense account for each grocery store would you?) Simply put the individualized information in the Description, Note, or Memo fields. (Description being the most likely in this case) Then any report can be used to filter off of this to show info on just one individual, location, etc.

> 
> But, I don't see how to setup the customer accounts.  Should they be similar to the default Checking Account and the individual dances be sub-accounts of the assigned customer accounts? Can that approach be done? Or, can the individual dances be assigned to their categories through configuration of the gnucash reports?

What do you mean here by ‘customers’? (they are not dance categories as noted above) If these are the members or participants, then simply set them up as customers. They don’t need separate accounts in the account tree. GnuCash will keep track (and allow you to report on) individual customer balances, aging, etc. If you did need to set up actual individual accounts for each, they would fall under Accounts Receivable. (not recommended though for the extra workload and loss of reporting features)

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Before you get too far along, I’d really recommend speaking to a local CPA first. Get the account tree straight, then we can help more with getting the data you want into GnuCash, and setting up the reports to get the data out the way you need. (ask the CPA to show you example report forms as well, and know which ones will be helpful to you or are required in your jurisdiction)

Regards,
Adrien