Chris If you receive further donations to the building fund during the year these will be new income so the second account to the bank account will be an Income account, i.e. an appropriately named subaccount of the top level income account and the account receiving the money will be an Asset account or sub account. The balance of the Asset account is being increased by the transaction so it will be a debit entry
Asset:Bank:Building Fund Dr xx.xx Income:Donations:Building Fund Cr xx.xx Income and Expense accounts are what are known as temporary Eqyuity accounts in accounting. Their purpose is to record transactions affecting the Equity of the entity in the current accounting period (usually financial year) so that the profit or lossfor a business or the surplus or deficit for a non-profit organization can be calculated over that period. At the end of the accounting period, those temporary accounts are transferred to Equity in conventional accounting practice by "closing the accounts" which is just a name for transactions transferring the balances of the income and expense account to the equity account. This procedure is not strictly necessary in GnuCash as the Profit/Loss reports will calculate the appropriate amounts for any specific period you require but can be done if necessary. Have you read the Basics section of the GnuCash Tutorial and Concepts guide (https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v5/C/gnucash-guide/index.html) . It is a basic introduction to the principles of accounting although fairly concise. David Cousens On Sun, 2024-11-10 at 18:52 +0000, Chris Green wrote: > On Sun, Nov 10, 2024 at 01:13:30PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On Sun, November 10, 2024 12:43 pm, Chris Green wrote: > > > > > OK, that's fine, so I have an equity account with the amount owed > > > from > > > the current account to the building fund. That amount transfers > > > to an > > > account in Liabilities. However I'm stuck on how I add further > > > amounts owing to the building fund during the year, where do they > > > transfer from into the liability account? > > > > The Equity account is (generally) only used for opening balances > > before > > you start accounting. Once you get going, any account opening > > would > > necessarily have a counter/balance account. For example, if you > > open a > > Car Loan, the counter-account would be the Car (Asset), and > > possibly some > > Tax & Fee Expense account(s). > > > Exactly as I said. The amount owed to the building account at the > start of the year is an equity account as a negative amount and adds > to the corresponding liability account at the start. > > > > So the question is, what "further amounts owing to the building > > fund" are > > you talking about? In this particular case, I don't really think > > it IS a > > liability -- a liability is when someone gives you sometihng of > > value and > > then you pay them back over time (e.g. a loan, mortgage, etc). In > > the > > case of regular building funds, that would most likely be an > > expense to > > you -- or an asset if you have a way to "get it back". > > > OK, so how **do** I put it in the accounts? Some time during the > year > we get a donation which is destined for the building fund but it's > paid into the general bank account. So I need a way to show the > amount in the current account bank balance but **also** indicate that > there's a corresponding liability as it needs to be moved to the > building fund. > _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
