[GNC] How to record payments for several items paid with a single transaction?

[Chris Green]

On Sun, Jul 23, 2023 at 11:05:24AM +0100, Michael Hendry wrote:
> On 23 Jul 2023, at 10:03, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> 
> > 
> >> 
> <SNIP>
> > Petty Cash is also used in the UK for this.
> 
> …but is primarily a mechanism used for staff to make small purchases of 
> office sundries where setting up an account with the vendor is unnecessary 
> and it’s not appropriate for the member of staff to have a company cheque 
> book or credit card. 
> 
That's what I meant.  We use the term Petty Cash in the UK in much the
same way as it seems to be used in the USA.

> 
> > 
> > In reality (as in my reply just now) I only record deposits once a
> > month or so.  However there is of course nothing at all to prevent me
> > putting the actual date of the service where the money was collected
> > for the entry in the Assets:Current:Cash account.
> > 
> > However I'm still not quite clear how the various accounts work
> > together.  At present I have Assets, Equity, Expenses and Income top
> > level accounts.  Income is split into such things as Collections,
> > Offertory Box, Fund Raising, etc.
> > 
> > If I add an Assets:Current Assets:Cash to record the various amounts
> > from collections, offertory box, etc. before they are deposited how do
> > they then get recorded as Income when the cash is moved from Assets:
> > Current Assets:Cash to Assets:Current Assets:Bank ?
> 
> You should record the cash income from the various collections etc to the 
> Assets:Current Assets:Cash via the appropriate Income: account as you receive 
> it (or as you count up the cash in the bags), preferably with the date 
> on which the collection took place. When you eventually come to make the 
> deposit into your current bank account, this is simply recorded as a transfer 
> between two asset accounts - it is no longer income, any more than paying 
> off your credit card bill from your current account needs to be accounted 
> for as Expenditure (in this case you are transferring money from an asset 
> account (your bank) to a liability account (your credit card). 
> 
So I need two sets of Income sub-accounts then.  One records the cash
deposits into Assets:Current Assets:Cash and the other ones record
donations made direct to Assets:Current Assets:Bank.  People don't use
cheques any more here (well, very rarely) so there's no parallel
Assets:Current Assets:Cheques awaiting deposit.

The most important thing from my point of view is the ability to
present accounts to the diocese where all donations of a particular
type are collected together.  The above would seem to make it
difficult to show, for example, all money made for a fund raising
event where some is cash and some is paid direct by donor to the
church bank account.  I need a single sub-account where I can see
*all* money of a particular type regardless of how it got there.

-- 
Chris Green