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

[Michael Hendry]

> On 27 Aug 2019, at 09:41, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.monteleone at lusfiber.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Aug 27, 2019 w35d239, at 1:40 AM, Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> OK, so provided I’m careful to clean up any outstanding invoices before the end of the financial year, I can use the Business Features for a cash-basis organisation.
> 
> Not necessary to clean up any outstanding invoices. Since you aren’t including the ‘Income:Pledges’ account in the Income Statement, any that aren’t paid in full won’t affect your Income. Only actual receipts will - aka - Cash Basis.


But my OCD tendencies would force me to do so…

> 
> Also, you wouldn’t include A/R in your Balance Sheet report since technically it isn’t supposed to exist in a Cash system.
> 
> 
>> 
>> I had understood from a recent response from Mike Novack that using an accrual-basis system for cash-basis organisation would be wrong.
> 
> That is true. What you are doing is using the invoice system (which is accrual based) to track some stuff you need for special purposes, but you aren’t reporting on those affected accounts. You’re using cash-basis accounts containing only cash-basis transactions for your formal reports.

I was thinking Mike meant that there was something intrinsically incompatible with cash-based accounting which happened when Business Features were added. But you’re saying that it’s only if there are posted and unpaid invoices outstanding at year-end that this is a problem.

> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 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.
>> 
>> Working this way would avoid creating the Income:Pledges and Income:Receipts workaround suggested above.
>> 
>> All income received from members could then be simultaneously invoiced and paid, with Accounts Receivable persistently zero.
> 
> You can do that, and it would be the standard advice on how to use GnuCash for a cash-basis book, but then lose the ability to see who hasn’t ‘paid up’.
> 
> (at least not without lots of individual member accounts, or a separate spreadsheet to keep track)
> 
> I’m also not sure how yet how that would affect your ability to track the gift amount per member.

I presume that an unposted invoice can be deleted, so it would be possible to prepare invoices when (for example) a member opted in to the Foundation Dinners, and to review unposted invoices periodically - especially in the closing weeks of the year.

>>> 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
>> 
>> Yes
> 
> Then you shouldn’t need individual member sub-accounts for each destination.

Exactly.

>> 
>>> 
>>> and
>>> 
>>> For the Members:
>>> 
>>>  How much (in aggregate for all destinations) each member donated? (for Gift Aid purposes)
>> 
>> Yes, but some destinations aren’t Gift-Aid-eligible
> 
> Here’s where I’m investigating using ‘expense vouchers’ for those destinations that are eligible. I didn’t get a chance to do a trial with it yet. Hopefully later today.
> 
> Another option might be the upcoming ‘owner report’ that might get included in the 3.7 release. It will allow you to match up payments to invoices easily. This might also allow you to run a report of gift amounts for only those invoices that match the eligible destinations.

Sounds useful!

Regards,

Michael

> 
> Regards,
> Adrien
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