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

[Michael Hendry]

> On 27 Aug 2019, at 03:36, doncram <doncram at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> In your case, Michael Hendry, are there other persons who need or work with
> some of the information?  

No, I’m playing in a one-man-band - which is (mostly) a good thing!

> 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 think you’re very brave, allowing read-write access to your spreadsheet(s). But of course, you wouldn’t be reaping the benefits of data-sharing if you didn’t allow others to write to them.

> 
> 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
> 

My questions arise from my own ignorance, and I depend for answers on the ready support of this forum.

Regards, 

Michael