[GNC] Non-profit accounts - reporting of restricted funds and of future commitments

[Michael Hendry]

I’ve just taken over as Treasurer of our local Rotary Club, which involves two sets of accounts:

1. The Club’s own business accounts - membership fees, stationery, travel, etc

2. The accounts of the Charity set up by members of the club, which receives income from the Club’s fund-raising activities and disburses the income on the advice of the Club, but ultimately at the discretion of the Charity’s Trustees.

I am expected to provide reports to five Club Council meetings during the year relating to both sets of accounts, and respond to ad-hoc enquiries at other times.


My predecessor (a retired bank manager) developed a set of spreadsheets over his five years as Treasurer, which I have now inherited.

I can obviously simply follow his method and present reports in the same manner as he did, but…

1. I think there was too much detail for the average member to be bothered with,

2. I’m not comfortable with the use of spreadsheets for the production of the legally-necessary reports to the Charity authorities - there are too many ways to shoot yourself in the foot!, particularly if modification of the spreadsheets becomes necessary in future.


I’ve therefore started parallel recording of the financial activities of the club in GnuCash and in the spreadsheets, and I’d welcome advice from users on the following.


A. The Charity’s Bank Account has an associated online-only savings account, with funds transferred between the two to keep a working surplus in the Current account; interest is periodically credited to the Savings Account.

I’ve set up two accounts:

Assets/Current Assets/Charity/Charity Current
Assets/Current Assets/Charity/Charity Savings

I’d like to be able to report on both accounts as if they were a single account (the spreadsheet simply treated these as a single account and ignored the transfers between the accounts) but a request for a report on the parent (Assets/Current Assets/Charity) in a Balance Sheet report gives a zero result.

B. Some charitable receipts are earmarked as they are received - e.g. 

Income/Earmarked Funds/Polio Plus
Income/Earmarked Funds/Water Account

and I’d like a similar composite report on the children of Income/Earmarked Funds, preferably on the same report as in A. above, to guide members on what is actually available for them to spend.

C. Sometimes a decision is made to commit funds already collected but in a situation where the money won’t be spent immediately - e.g. a building project.

This is obviously similar to the Earmarked Funds in B., but I’m not sure how best to handle it. 

I could create a transaction between the Charity Current Account with today’s date and Expenses/Charity/Committed Funds as the destination account.


Before I start to climb the Learning Curve of Scheme, are there existing reports that could be adjusted for my purposes?

Or would I be better just to extract the necessary figures before Council Meetings and prepare a report in a Word Processor?


Yours, sincerely hoping to avoid too much travel down blind alleys,

Michael