[GNC] Dealing with discounts when not using Business Features

[Vincent Dawans]

Personally I would create your Discounts and Bursary accounts as income
accounts, possibly even as subaccounts of your main income account for that
product/service. Yes they will only have rebates (debits) in them, but they
are not an expense, they are a form of reduced income (by choice). The
distinction is important in terms of "true accounting representation".
Think of it with an extreme case. If I said I charge $1 million for this
email advice, but then give you a $999,999.99 discount, as a financial
analyst, would you want to see a P&L with a $1 million income and a
$999,999.99 expense or just a $0.01 income and zero expenses? Because you
control each side here (the price charged and the rebate), they are one and
the same, so it would be the second scenario.

By it's OK to put it as a "debit" income account, you still have the info
in the details of the accounts and can get it out in a report to show how
much income you forfeited, but a high-level P&L will give you the correct
income (with the rebate) instead of the extra expense.

Sincerely,

Vincent Dawans

On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 10:27 AM Michael Hendry <hendry.michael at gmail.com>
wrote:

> More of a bookkeeping query than a GnuCash problem, but here goes…
>
> I am a trustee of a local jazz education charity, the main event being a
> jazz summer school with residential and non-residential options.
>
> We offer discounts of 5% for two or more family members attending, 10% for
> group bookings, and also offer bursaries, but none of is these recorded
> explicitly in the books at the moment.
>
> I plan to introduce two new accounts - Expenses:Discounts and
> Expenses:Bursary - and use these to “top-up” any individual’s payments to
> Income:Course Fees to the appropriate level. This way, each player will be
> represented in Income:Course fees as having paid either the full
> residential fee or the full non-residential fee, and under- or
> over-payments will be easer to pick up using a saved report, which can also
> itemise the discounts and bursaries using the Memo fields to identify the
> player (as opposed to the person paying, recorded in the Description) and
> the type of discount or bursary.
>
> Does anyone spot any elephant traps that I’m missing?
>
> Regards, and thanks,
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
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