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

Jim DeLaHunt list+gnucash at jdlh.com
Sun Jul 23 14:47:22 EDT 2023


Chris:

On 2023-07-23 05:55, Chris Green wrote:
>> 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.…

Why do you need two sets of Income sub-accounts?  If there is an income 
sub-account for all donations of a certain type, be they cash donations 
at an event or cheques sent to the church, then use this same income 
sub-account in transactions involving cash deposits into Assets:Current 
Assets:Cash and donations made direct to Assets:Current Assets:Bank.

> …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.… I need a single sub-account where I can see
> *all* money of a particular type regardless of how it got there.…
If you want to show the diocese all donations of a particular type, then 
that single income sub-account for all donations of that type will have 
entries for "*all* money of a particular type regardless of how it got 
there".

As Stan Brown said, this is a simple situation, but this thread is 
having a hard time finding the words which will let the simplicity shine 
through.

Also, some of your questions seem to be actually about accounting and 
bookkeeping, rather than about using GnuCash. GnuCash claims to be an 
efficient way to do double-entry bookkeeping, but it does not claim to 
protect you from having to understand double-entry bookkeeping. If you 
have not already, I recommend that you:

  * read the entire GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts Guide
    <https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&lang=C&doc=guide>,
  * make a simple, largely empty GnuCash book file as a place to simply
    do experiments, so that you can try things without endangering your
    actual data, and
  * get an introductory book on accounting (maybe on accounting for
    churches and non-profits) and read a few chapters

I hope this helps clarify things for you.
     —Jim DeLaHUnt



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