On 3/11/2025 6:08 PM, Todd Gould wrote:
David (and all),
Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful responses.
However, from these responses, it seems that I have either not stated
my question/need as clearly as I should have or that I have
unintentionally confused the issue with my unfortunate use of 'flow'
in proximity to 'cash'.
I will try to restate for hopefully better clarity....
1. I am both familiar with and understand the fundamental accounting
differences between Accrual basis and Cash basis accounting
2. Our business model requires Accrual based accounting (GnuCash
default - good!) treatment for our daily operations. Invoicing (and
the subsequent delay in payment) as well as Payroll Expense (and the
shift in time from when work is performed from actual payroll cycle)
are 2 very common and prominent examples of needs for this.
3. For tax purposes (as well as a few other reporting requirements) we
report on a Cash basis
4. I'm not interested in maintaining two separate sets of books (one
for Accrual and one for Cash basis)
5. I'm not interested in simply getting closer to a Cash basis by
delaying entering of whatever transaction until payment is received or
made. This would be both a high likelihood of error in our case as
well as also fundamentally work against our genuine need for accurate
Accrual based books as stated in 2) above.
So, what I ideally want/need is the ability to run reports (P&L and
Balance Sheet mostly) on both an Accrual as well as Cash basis. I am
familiar with QuickBooks capability to toggle between those 2 'modes'
directly within a given report. This would be ideal for simplicity,
but if I can run both reports directly, albeit separately, that is
also fine.
A) I have used QuickBooks (in the distant past) when it certainly did
not have that capability. I am not at all sure HOW that would be
possible (certainly not easy) and I am a (retired ) pro. Did software
for one of the world's larger financials.
B) I was NOT describing "two sets of books" in the sense of two complete
sets of books. I was describing organizations on cash basis but
wanting/needing to be able to produce invoices (for member statements)
and that might be ALL that second set of books (skeleton ) used for. In
other words, possibly NOTHING done with these invoices except mailing
out. NOT used when payment received (quite possibly only a fraction
going to be paid the amount invoiced in any case.
C) You are keeping books accrual basis, yes? You are really asking "how
can I produce SOME reports) cash basis?" How hard/easy to do the
adjusting depends on the nature of your business. How many income and
expense accounts need to be adjusted for P&L report (with regard to
receivable and payable). Whether any asset or liability accounts also
need adjusting for Balance Sheet. In other words, might be only a few
adjustments to make, report, back out. How frequent these reports?
(annually, for tax purposes? Monthly for report to Board? That's an
order of magnitude difference in effort)
The essential adjustment is everything pending in receivables and
payables needs to be backed out for accrual books to report cash basis.
This can be easy (essentially all receivables one income account, all
payables one expense account, only a few exceptions) or very hard (many
income accounts, many expense accounts affected). Once the adjustment
dome, just report excluding receivables and payables and after report,
back out these changes.
<< the only way I can see AUTOMATED (your "toggle") is for the system
create a temporary second set of accrual books then one by one
cancelling out transactions active in receivables and payables, and runs
report on THAT (temporary) set of books. Couldn't be a change to the
report itself as both P&L and balance sheet are using account totals,
not individual transaction.
Michael D Novack
_______________________________________________
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.
