[GNC] Bookkeeping for a club's charity account - use business features?

doncram doncram at gmail.com
Mon Aug 26 23:10:08 EDT 2019 

Oh, another complication for my botanical garden society, is that some of
the donations create obligations that need to be tracked.  Similar to how
Michael Hendry needs to track the multiple purposes for each individual's
payments.  Contributions might be earmarked for one of our subgarden areas,
to fund a tree or bench, or might "earn" placement of a memorial brick in
one of our patios.  The donor might want the brick done, or might not.  I
think the previous treasurer kept all this in her head somehow, or in some
separate file she might have kept, and she arranged for the bricks to be
done periodically, with text chosen by donor.  I cannot do any of that,
because I am limited and also the organization has been growing.  But the
info needs to go to the right other people.

Oh, by the way, for a shared spreadsheet or even for any non-shared
spreadsheet, one absolutely has to have an "original sort order" column, to
bring the spreadsheet back to regular format, when anyone sorts it
differently for some purpose, and those with access need to understand that
and not mess up that column, which is okay by everyone else in my case.
Again, I cannot imagine myself generating reports or whatever, I do not
have the time.  No way can I run multiple accounting systems for pledges or
whatever, either.  I can only imagine sharing the info in a joint-access
spreadsheet so others can add whatever they need to, and sort it however
they like and get what they need.  How else could this possibly be done?

Donald Cram

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On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 8:36 PM doncram <doncram at gmail.com> wrote:

> In your case, Michael Hendry, are there other persons who need or work
> with some of the information?  Surely then there are communication /
> information sharing needs, which cannot be addressed easily with your
> single-access semi-complicated GnuCash system.
>
> I, too, am new treasurer of a nonprofit, a botanical garden society which
> is set up as a charitable nonprofit, and I have puzzled over similar issues
> for tracking, but also for sharing info.  A big issue is that select other
> board members or volunteers work with some of the same information.  The
> treasurer job is too big already, and others are better about handling some
> tasks like tracking membership renewals (i.e. contributions at "pledge"
> amount) and sending out reminders, and following up with thank you notes in
> writing for larger donations, and email notes for smaller ones.  One
> volunteer, call her the membership director,  has a big spreadsheet of most
> of the members/contributors and dollar amounts and so on.  The board
> secretary is really good at writing nice thank you notes for the bigger
> donations. I hate the fact that I, as treasurer, if I follow the past
> practice, am essentially duplicating a whole lot of info, when I enter each
> donation or membership payment, putting member name into a description/note
> field.  "We" already have that information!  Couldn't it be shared?  And
> what about cross-checking the spreadsheet information vs. my accounting
> entries.... I know there are at least a few discrepancies, which need to be
> identified and followed up upon, else a donor gets no acknowledgment or
> gets "billed" twice or whatever.
>
> So, I have started use of a combined-access spreadsheet, by uploading the
> membership director's spreadsheet to a Google Docs spreadsheet, and I
> talked her through using it online.  Happily it is perfectly easy for her
> to do her job in the now-shared spreadsheet.  And I will add columns as
> necessary to record deposit dates and whatnot.  I am hoping to do my data
> entry about specific individuals there, i.e. by just recording treasurer
> stuff in "my" columns, adding to already-existing rows for all members.  I
> am hoping to stop my very detailed accounting, and making occasional
> accounting entries that are summary, tying out to the info in my columns.
> E.g. I can record the donation/membership check amounts in a column for
> income from August 2019, say, and make just one summary entry into the
> accounting system.
>
> I cannot imagine myself producing all the necessary reports to serve
> others and all purposes if I was handling all the info myself.  And I can't
> imagine collaborating with others in any way other than a shared
> spreadsheet.  Any comments/suggestions?
>
> Thank you Michael Hendry for the question and thank all the participants
> so far!
>
> sincerely, Donald Cram
>
>
>
>
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> On Mon, Aug 26, 2019 at 5:19 PM Christopher Lam <christopher.lck at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> This "pledged income" tracking looks eerily similar to the budgeting aka
>> "virtual transactions" that I was floating about some time ago...
>>
>> On Tue., 27 Aug. 2019, 00:29 Adrien Monteleone, <
>> adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > > On Aug 26, 2019 w35d238, at 3:43 AM, Michael Hendry <
>> > hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >> And I see that your organization does pledges. Here in the US,
>> pledges
>> > ARE receivable,but only according to the terms of the pledge << thus if
>> a
>> > person pledged X a year for five years, only the X for the current year
>> due
>> > NOW >> So pledge accounting will require extra work unless all your
>> pledges
>> > are simple, immediate pledges.
>> > >
>> > > Volunteering to be a paying guest at a “Foundation Dinner” is the only
>> > undertaking that fits into the definition of a pledge, but I can see
>> that
>> > setting up an invoice for it would make it “receivable”, and have a
>> > lifetime that went beyond the financial year’s end.
>> > >
>> > > But if I avoided setting up invoices for this particular fundraising
>> > activity, could I use the Business Features to record income from a each
>> > member (“Customer”) as it arises?
>> >
>> > To answer that question first, yes, you can take a payment without a
>> > corresponding invoice already having been posted, it is considered a
>> > ‘pre-payment’. But you won’t get any comparison against pledged amounts
>> > because that is what the invoice is for and those wouldn’t have been
>> posted
>> > (or created) yet. You’ll just get to see that MemberX paid a certain
>> > amount. (and since there is no pledge amount to balance it, it won’t
>> > calculate your ‘gift’ portion.)
>> >
>> > However,
>> >
>> > The issue with invoices on a cash basis in GnuCash is you can’t post
>> them
>> > till payment is received otherwise it hits the ‘Income’ account too
>> early.
>> > But that negates the ability to see what was ‘pledged’ vs. what was
>> paid.
>> >
>> > You can get around this limitation by creating two accounts, something
>> > like this:
>> >
>> > Income:Pledges
>> > Income:Receipts
>> >
>> > 1) Post the invoices to the Pledges account.
>> > 2) Take payments as normal.
>> >
>> > You can now track what money is promised vs. what was paid via Customer
>> > Reports.
>> >
>> > 3) When payments are made, make an additional transaction that transfers
>> > the same amount of funds from the Pledges account to the Receipts
>> account.
>> >
>> > 4) When you run your Income Statement, include the Receipts account, but
>> > not the Pledges account.
>> >
>> > You now have a cash-basis Income Statement, _and_ you get to take
>> > advantage of the A/R features.
>> >
>> >
>> > >
>> > >>
>> > >> But you can easily have a second set of books to keep and report on
>> "by
>> > member" stuff, and if using the business features, can invoice.
>> > >
>> > > That’s a method I hadn’t thought of, and will look into. There’s the
>> > obvious risk of these two sets of books getting out of step.
>> > >
>> > >> Note though that  at least in the US "membership dies" are not really
>> > receivables <<you are legally allowed to drop out of a voluntary
>> > organization at any time -- organizational rules about "demits", etc.
>> apply
>> > only if you want to rejoin>> However many organizations even cash basis
>> > [prefer being able to send out "statements" (invoices to members)
>> > >>
>> > >> Notice that I misunderstood.What I was suggesting was if you had to
>> > supply to the government the CORRECT member name for the donations, not
>> > just that it had to be SOME member's name. The latter is of course far
>> > simpler in terms of record keeping << I was picturing the former because
>> > possibly there were by person limits >>
>> > >
>> > > From the point of view of the annual report to OSCR (the charity
>> > regulator) there is no need for detailed reporting of income - see
>> > https://www.oscr.org.uk/media/1800/2015-01-27-example-accounts-scio.pdf
>> -
>> > but the annual claim for Gift Aid requires the total contributed per
>> annum
>> > by each individual member. The 25% boost that Gift Aid covers is the
>> reason
>> > why most Rotary Clubs in the UK set up charities which operate “at
>> > arms-length” from the clubs themselves but whose trustees are club
>> > officers.
>> > >
>> > >>
>> > >> Michael
>> > >>
>> > >> PS: I do NOT attempt to get gnucash to produce reports in their final
>> > form. Easier to export full reports and then copy into a document that
>> gets
>> > edited to remove extraneous detail, insert annotations, etc.
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > > The way I’ve set up the accounts may need review, as I’m going to
>> > require a lot of individual searches to isolate contributions from
>> > individual members.
>> > >
>> > > I think I need to remove a tier and identify the intended destination
>> of
>> > the income using a tag in a searchable field.
>> > >
>> > > Income:Destination1:MemberA … MemberN
>> > > Income:Destination2:MemberA … MemberN
>> > > …
>> > > Income:DestinationX:MemberA … MemberN
>> > >
>> > > - a total of X * N accounts.
>> >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Becomes
>> > >
>> > > Income:Donations:MemberA … MemberN, with Destinations 1…X recorded in
>> > the Description field of each transaction.
>> > >
>> > > - a total of N accounts.
>> > >
>> > > Thanks for your continued interest and support,
>> > >
>> > > Michael
>> >
>> > 1) Do you need to know how much each member donated for each
>> destination?
>> >
>> > or
>> >
>> > 2)
>> >
>> >   For the Club:
>> >
>> >     Do you just want to track how much was received (in aggregate for
>> all
>> > members) for each destination
>> >
>> >   and
>> >
>> >   For the Members:
>> >
>> >     How much (in aggregate for all destinations) each member donated?
>> (for
>> > Gift Aid purposes)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > If #1 one, that is quite messy, yes, and you’ll need lots of manual
>> > transactions and some sort of searchable/filterable tag system as I
>> > described previously. (to avoid hundreds or thousands of accounts and
>> > sub-accounts)
>> >
>> > But if #2, then the business features can handle that easily with
>> invoice
>> > line items posted to Income accounts for each destination and assigning
>> > those invoices to  individual customer accounts. No need for the
>> individual
>> > member account(s) in the Income tree at all. GnuCash will track each
>> > customer's pledged (invoiced) amounts as well as payments. The gift
>> portion
>> > *might* be a little trickier, but I think it can be achieved by the
>> expense
>> > vouchers feature. (since they operate as sort of a ‘chargeback’) I’ll
>> have
>> > to investigate.
>> >
>> > Regards,
>> > Adrien
>> >
>> >
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