[GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?

[Adrien Monteleone]

In general, I’d say this is an accounting question - for a local, certified, qualified accountant, not for the list.

But, to the basic question of how to ID some transactions for reporting purposes, you have a few options.

#1 - you can use the Notes field to put some sort of label, tag, or descriptive info to indicate what the expense is for. You’ll need to use View > Double Line to see it. (You could also put this in the description itself, but using a different field is ‘cleaner’)

#2 - same, but rather put that label/tag/info in the Memo field of the relevant split.

#3 - again, same, but use the Action field



For reporting you have a couple of options:

A - Run a Find on the field you placed the label/tag/info to get a resulting transaction list, then run an Account Report on that results tab

B - If you used option #1 above, you can go straight to a Transaction Report and use the Filter option to give you only transactions matching the label/tag/info

Regards,
Adrien

> On May 23, 2020 w21d144, at 9:28 AM, Tim Quinn <tim.quinn at att.net> wrote:
> 
> I realize some more information might be useful.
> 
> Briefly (and oversimplified), both PPP and EIDL are US government programs which provide money from the government to a small business. 
> 
> PPP funds are a loan, some or all of which can be forgiven (not need to be paid back) and is expressly not taxable as income, according to the interpretations of the law I have read.
> 
> In my case, the EIDL funds are actually a grant, not a loan, and the tax treatment is a little ambiguous currently.
> 
> But I’m actually less concerned with the tax treatment currently than the following...
> 
> I want to be very explicit in my accounting to show what expenses we are using the government funds for. That part I’m not quite sure the best way to handle. Normally we write checks to pay expenses, so I debit the checking account. The government funds are already in the business checking account, so I am trying to choose the best way to identify that specific expenses — paid out of the checking account — are linked to the PPP or EIDL money.
> 
> I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who is actually dealing with these same issues or has advice how to handle this.
> 
> Thanks again.
> 
> - Tim