[GNC] Using GnuCash with charity restricted and unrestricted funds, advice wanted

[Michael or Penny Novack]

On 5/26/2024 10:24 AM, (Alan) David Smith wrote:
> Dear  Sir/Madam,
>
> I am an FCCA in England and an ex PCC treasurer. The main point to bear in mind about funds is that they must be accounted for Separately. They do not have to be represented by separate bank accounts, but it may advisable in Certain cases. So one bank can share various funds. But the bookkeeping must be clear.

The other thing to keep clear is that (as Treasurer) you need to be able 
to produce the report which is NOT the same thing as saying the finished 
report (pretty print and all) has to come DIRECTLY from your financial 
software. All your financial software needs to be able to do is produce 
raw reports which contain the data you would need to put together the 
finished product.

Thus I would guess the "final product" for a restricted fund report in 
the UK would need starting balance, income to this fund for the period, 
expenses paid for by this fund, and ending balance. Yes? Notice that for 
this you might have to partition the authorized expense! << because 
while the restricted funds can only be used t=for this purpose nothing 
prevents the organization from also using general funds for the purpose. 
In other words, possibly not all of that expense were paid for by 
restricted funds >>

The first organization where I took over being Treasurer after retiring 
another board member who was a lawyer/accountant told me "Mike, don't 
bother writing custom reports. Just export raw reports and we use a full 
function editor to produce the finished products" << I could have; spent 
decades in the cypher mines and was a senior systems analyst/senior 
business analyst -- never had been paid to write in LISP but I would not 
have taken long to become fluent in Scheme >>. The point here is that IN 
GENERAL going to have to do some editing anyway to get a pro[per 
finished product.

Michael D Novack