[GNC] New user - anyone else using GnuCash for PCC (church) accounts? Advice?

[Jacob Oommen]

Hi Chris,

Congratulations on your nomination as Treasurer!
I used to be a treasurer of my Church, in Bangalore India, from 2012 to
2014.  I used GnuCash for keeping the accounts.   I wrote up on how I did
this in blogger, in a series of posts that I made back then.You can find
the first page on
https://financeandaccountingforchurches.blogspot.com/2012/12/church-accounting-using-gnucash-1.html
The accounts of the church were earlier to my taking over, like in your
case, maintained on pen and paper
I used gnucash, and also excel as tools.  The first entries for most of
the collections were made on excel templates, which I imported into gnucash
using the qif importer.  The blog includes a sample chart of accounts that
you can import right away, excels with macros embedded that I developed,
that created the qif files required, howtos for recording commonly used
transactions, howtos and templates for creating the reports that were
required to be presented in the Executive Committee Meetings and GBM's
(General Body Meetings,  Annual Church Parochial Meeting APCM's for you
:-)), (created using the gnucash standard reports and finished off in excel)
I tried to cover most of the topics, and has all the resources,  that that
are normally used in the job.
My accounts were audited by a professional chartered accountant, and
approved in the General Body Meetings of the 2014 and 15 financial years
I have not kept this blog uptodate after that - which I probably should
have.  Not being in the job anymore was one of the reasons.  Many of the
sections can probably be updated.  For example, instead of the qif
importer;  you would be able to use the new excel importer now directly
The "restricted account" you are referring to is probably a "fund".  Monies
collected for a specific purpose and meant to be used for that specific
purpose only.  These are accounts that need to be kept in the Equity
section. There is a reference to this on the 9th page of the blog.  The
chart of accounts provided has examples of several funds that we used to
maintain.
Please check if this blog would be useful for you.  Let me know if you have
any more queries, or need any help that the blog does not address.  God
Bless!

Best Regards

Jacob Oommen


----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 26 Aug 2020 11:21:11 +0100
> From: Chris Green <cl at isbd.net>
> To: gnucash-user at gnucash.org
> Subject: [GNC] New user - anyone else using GnuCash for PCC (church)
>         accounts? Advice?
> Message-ID: <20200826102111.GA997230 at esprimo>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> I have just taken over as treasurer of a (very) small church Parochial
> Church Council.  The existing accounts are all wholly manual and I
> want to move to some level of computerisation.
>
> I am a long time Linux user and was, before I retired, a Software
> Engineer so the 'techie' side of things shouldn't be a big issue. I
> can install GnuCash OK and get it running etc.
>
> I used to run my own small Ltd. company so basic accounting methods,
> VAT, etc. are not beyond me either.
>
> What I want is more on the 'how to run a small PCC accounts with GnuCash'
> sort of thing.  There are some quirks to PCC accounts (I think!):-
>
>     How does one deal with 'unrestricted' and 'restricted' accounts?
>     Can one set up 'types' of accounts in GnuCash?
>
>     Is GnuCash overkill for this?  Total cash assets are only a few
>     thousand pounds and annual turnover is probably down in the
>     hundreds now.
>
>     Is there anyone else using GnuCash for this?
>
> Thank you for any/all help that anyone can offer.
>
> --
> Chris Green
>
>
> ------------------------------


Best Regards

Jacob Oommen

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