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

[doncram]

This is exactly where Job Costing would be of direct assistance.   Job
costing is now partially implemented in GnuCash (at least you can define
jobs and you can attach them to any specific expenses).  Please see a new
thread on Job Costing soon.
For either a for-profit or a non-profit 501c3, what you want to do is
define a new Customer (the U.S. government, I guess) and Job for that
customer (the specific PPP or EIDL grant), maybe call it Job-PPP2020May.
When the funds come in, record the receipt in a grants revenue account with
designation of that job.  As you spend the funds, just use your regular
expense accounts that reflect the kind of work you do (e.g. labor, rent,
utilities, materials, whatever) but attach the job code.  At any time, you
should be able to run an Income Statement By Jobs report which, in its
first data column is a regular overall Income Statement, and which uses
following columns for each job.  So you can see explicitly which revenues
came in for the job and what specifically you spend for it.
That would be easy and clear, if GnuCash can now provide the relevant
reporting (see other thread).
Does this make sense to you?
I am, by the way, using job costing this way for the books of a 501c3
nonprofit for exactly this purpose.
sincerely
Don Cram

On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:50 AM Michael or Penny Novack <
stepbystepfarm at comcast.net> wrote:

> On 5/23/2020 11:56 AM, Adrien Monteleone wrote:
> > To continue on Dale’s notes:
> >
> > Regardless of the real-world treatment of the funds, you can create a
> sub-account in GnuCash under your bank account and treat the funds as
> segregated. That will also make reporting easier as you might not need to
> use a tagging system, but you might still find tagging useful for some
> other dimension of categorization. (maybe you want tag transactions as
> ‘payroll’, ‘utilities’, etc.)
>
>   This is not completely unlike the situation of a non-profit receiving
> a grant. Can only be used for certain purposes. In this case, when a
> qualifying expense has been paid, also transfer the amount between two
> liabilities, one for unconditionally owed (not used yet for purpose) and
> the second for "has been used for purpose, now conditional" (might be
> forgiven). The non-profit would instead have credited a "grant income"
> account.
>
> JUST using a partition in the bank account might not reflect the actual
> situation. Sure, you can transfer between the partitions when a
> qualifying expense has been paid. But you do not know if that part of
> the loan will have to be paid back << what is not used for a qualifying
> expense WILL have to be paid back >>
>
> Michael D Novack
>
> PS: As usual, with the disclaimer that I lack credentials to give this
> sort of advice. But THIS is a case where I bet most of the pros are
> having problems deciding how should be done.
>
>
>
>
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