You did NOT have to have separate books!
In ONE set of books you can have as many "bank accounts" in the ledger
ans you have bank accounts. Just give them different names so that you
can tell them apart. We may have some difficulties with cross pond
differences in language. Thus your "current account" means what I would
call a "checking account" and you must not confuse "current account"
with the asset category "current assets" << all accounts containing
immediately available funds >>
Thus:
Assets
Current assets
Current account
Savings account << where you are keeping restricted funds >>
OK, now your donations are all being deposited into the checking account
even though some of those donations are restricted. You are asking how
to deal with that? Under income you could have:
Income
unrestricted donations
untransferred restricted donations
restricted donations
When you make a deposit into the checking account of a bunch of
donations (of both sorts) you use the top two. Hint: easiest to have an
asset under current assets "undeposited cash" and as donations come in
they go there credited to either unrestricted donations or
untransferred. Now your actual bank deposit is an easy transaction, just
undeposited to checking. Later, when you transfer from the "checking
account" to the "savings account" <note> you would ALSO be transferring
between "untransferred restricted donations" to "restricted donations".
NOTE -- your reference to "building society" manes a different bank?
Still that way your side of the pond?
As for your question about statements, almost all gnucash reports allow
you to SELECT which accounts are to be included. You'd be able to
produce statements for just the unrestricted funds, just the restricted,
both together, etc.
Do note that while you can't use restricted funds for other than their
intended purpose THE REVERSE IS NOT TRUE <<well, that would depend on
your organizational bylaws but would be most unusual >> That's why you
would want to use restricted funds for their intended purpose first
(before using any non-restricted funds for that purpose). You want to
clear the restriction.
Michael D Novack
PS --- The usual caveat, I'm not "licensed" to give accounting help. For
what it's worth, I've been Treasurer for a number of non-profits.
PPS -- if you are following this, but your organization does not have
that second bank account, you could track the restriction using a
liability.
On 5/25/2024 4:13 PM, Chris Green wrote:
I am the treasurer of a very small parish church council in the UK.
We have to present separate accounts for restricted and unrestricted
accounts, this is a legal requirement and also required by our diocese.
At the moment restricted funds are, basically, building funds and are
kept in an interest paying savings account. The unrestricted funds
are kept in a bank current account.
My problem is that many donations to the restricted account (e.g.
donations that the donor has specifically said must be for repairs of
the church roof) go into the bank current account and have to be
transferred from there to the building society account.
For the last couple of years I have separate GnuCash data for the
current account and the building society account, this has worked
reasonably well. However we are now moving into a period of getting
the roof repaired and much more money will have to move via the
current account.
So, how should I deal with this using GnuCash? I can see that I could
separate accounts into two hierarchies (in a single database) -
restricted and unrestricted with expenses and income for each, etc.
However is it then possible to present separate end of year statements
for them? This would simplify incoming donations which are all to a
single bank account.
Or are there other strategies which work better for this sort of
situation?
I emphasise that this is a small church, annual income is only of the
order of £5000 and we have no full-time or paid employees. So the
solution has to be simple and manageable by part-time,
non-professional people.
--
There is no possibility of social justice on a dead planet except the equality
of the grave.
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