[GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
I’ve been reading various non-GC articles and blog postings about how a small business might account for PPP or EIDL funding and expenses. I’ve looked for but have not found any GnuCash list posting about this. I’m curious if anyone is using GC for this and, if so, how you’ve chosen to do so? Or, even if you’re not doing this yourself, what advice you might have for those of us who will try? Thanks in advance. - Tim ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
I realize some more information might be useful. Briefly (and oversimplified), both PPP and EIDL are US government programs which provide money from the government to a small business. PPP funds are a loan, some or all of which can be forgiven (not need to be paid back) and is expressly not taxable as income, according to the interpretations of the law I have read. In my case, the EIDL funds are actually a grant, not a loan, and the tax treatment is a little ambiguous currently. But I’m actually less concerned with the tax treatment currently than the following... I want to be very explicit in my accounting to show what expenses we are using the government funds for. That part I’m not quite sure the best way to handle. Normally we write checks to pay expenses, so I debit the checking account. The government funds are already in the business checking account, so I am trying to choose the best way to identify that specific expenses — paid out of the checking account — are linked to the PPP or EIDL money. I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who is actually dealing with these same issues or has advice how to handle this. Thanks again. - Tim > On May 23, 2020, at 7:41 AM, Tim Quinn wrote: > > I’ve been reading various non-GC articles and blog postings about how a small > business might account for PPP or EIDL funding and expenses. > > I’ve looked for but have not found any GnuCash list posting about this. > > I’m curious if anyone is using GC for this and, if so, how you’ve chosen to > do so? > > Or, even if you’re not doing this yourself, what advice you might have for > those of us who will try? > > Thanks in advance. > > - Tim > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
I just had a committee meeting for a 501(3)(c) this week where this was discussed. This is not really a gnucash issue but an accounting issue. A banker sits on the committee and part of the problem is that SBA has not finalized their procedures. Apparently some draft information has been released and it appears that fairly detailed information on how the funds were spent will be required. (This is again the banker's input.) There was disagreement on exactly how to proceed, but a few things were settled. The PPP funds were placed in a special subaccount of the checking account. (Our CPA was consulted and she said it was unnecessary to actually have a separate account at the bank.) A liability account was added to show this as a loan even though we expect the loan to be forgiven. The disagreement was over two approaches for handling expenditures from the subaccount. First Approach: Continue with all current procedures and accounts for expenditures. When PPP related expenses occur, e.g., biweekly payroll or utility bills, a transfer with a detailed memo is used to move funds from the special subaccount into the main account to cover the allowed portion of the expense. Second Approach: When PPP expenses occur directly credit the subaccount for the expense. In the case of payroll this requires some additional splits to handle the non-PPP portion and modifications of some other transactions. (These have to do with the use of an external service to actually do the tax calculations and pay the employees.) I am advocating the first approach as simpler and less likely to disrupt our normal reporting. The second approach was claimed to provide a better record for applying for forgiveness. Dale On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 9:31 AM Tim Quinn wrote: > I realize some more information might be useful. > > Briefly (and oversimplified), both PPP and EIDL are US government programs > which provide money from the government to a small business. > > PPP funds are a loan, some or all of which can be forgiven (not need to be > paid back) and is expressly not taxable as income, according to the > interpretations of the law I have read. > > In my case, the EIDL funds are actually a grant, not a loan, and the tax > treatment is a little ambiguous currently. > > But I’m actually less concerned with the tax treatment currently than the > following... > > I want to be very explicit in my accounting to show what expenses we are > using the government funds for. That part I’m not quite sure the best way > to handle. Normally we write checks to pay expenses, so I debit the > checking account. The government funds are already in the business checking > account, so I am trying to choose the best way to identify that specific > expenses — paid out of the checking account — are linked to the PPP or EIDL > money. > > I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who is actually dealing with these same > issues or has advice how to handle this. > > Thanks again. > > - Tim > > > > > > On May 23, 2020, at 7:41 AM, Tim Quinn wrote: > > > > I’ve been reading various non-GC articles and blog postings about how a > small business might account for PPP or EIDL funding and expenses. > > > > I’ve looked for but have not found any GnuCash list posting about this. > > > > I’m curious if anyone is using GC for this and, if so, how you’ve chosen > to do so? > > > > Or, even if you’re not doing this yourself, what advice you might have > for those of us who will try? > > > > Thanks in advance. > > > > - Tim > > ___ > > gnucash-user mailing list > > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > > - > > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
In general, I’d say this is an accounting question - for a local, certified, qualified accountant, not for the list. But, to the basic question of how to ID some transactions for reporting purposes, you have a few options. #1 - you can use the Notes field to put some sort of label, tag, or descriptive info to indicate what the expense is for. You’ll need to use View > Double Line to see it. (You could also put this in the description itself, but using a different field is ‘cleaner’) #2 - same, but rather put that label/tag/info in the Memo field of the relevant split. #3 - again, same, but use the Action field For reporting you have a couple of options: A - Run a Find on the field you placed the label/tag/info to get a resulting transaction list, then run an Account Report on that results tab B - If you used option #1 above, you can go straight to a Transaction Report and use the Filter option to give you only transactions matching the label/tag/info Regards, Adrien > On May 23, 2020 w21d144, at 9:28 AM, Tim Quinn wrote: > > I realize some more information might be useful. > > Briefly (and oversimplified), both PPP and EIDL are US government programs > which provide money from the government to a small business. > > PPP funds are a loan, some or all of which can be forgiven (not need to be > paid back) and is expressly not taxable as income, according to the > interpretations of the law I have read. > > In my case, the EIDL funds are actually a grant, not a loan, and the tax > treatment is a little ambiguous currently. > > But I’m actually less concerned with the tax treatment currently than the > following... > > I want to be very explicit in my accounting to show what expenses we are > using the government funds for. That part I’m not quite sure the best way to > handle. Normally we write checks to pay expenses, so I debit the checking > account. The government funds are already in the business checking account, > so I am trying to choose the best way to identify that specific expenses — > paid out of the checking account — are linked to the PPP or EIDL money. > > I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who is actually dealing with these same > issues or has advice how to handle this. > > Thanks again. > > - Tim ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
To continue on Dale’s notes: Regardless of the real-world treatment of the funds, you can create a sub-account in GnuCash under your bank account and treat the funds as segregated. That will also make reporting easier as you might not need to use a tagging system, but you might still find tagging useful for some other dimension of categorization. (maybe you want tag transactions as ‘payroll’, ‘utilities’, etc.) Regards, Adrien ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
On 5/23/2020 11:56 AM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: To continue on Dale’s notes: Regardless of the real-world treatment of the funds, you can create a sub-account in GnuCash under your bank account and treat the funds as segregated. That will also make reporting easier as you might not need to use a tagging system, but you might still find tagging useful for some other dimension of categorization. (maybe you want tag transactions as ‘payroll’, ‘utilities’, etc.) This is not completely unlike the situation of a non-profit receiving a grant. Can only be used for certain purposes. In this case, when a qualifying expense has been paid, also transfer the amount between two liabilities, one for unconditionally owed (not used yet for purpose) and the second for "has been used for purpose, now conditional" (might be forgiven). The non-profit would instead have credited a "grant income" account. JUST using a partition in the bank account might not reflect the actual situation. Sure, you can transfer between the partitions when a qualifying expense has been paid. But you do not know if that part of the loan will have to be paid back << what is not used for a qualifying expense WILL have to be paid back >> Michael D Novack PS: As usual, with the disclaimer that I lack credentials to give this sort of advice. But THIS is a case where I bet most of the pros are having problems deciding how should be done. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
Re: [GNC] Anyone using GnuCash to account for US PPP or EIDL funds?
This is exactly where Job Costing would be of direct assistance. Job costing is now partially implemented in GnuCash (at least you can define jobs and you can attach them to any specific expenses). Please see a new thread on Job Costing soon. For either a for-profit or a non-profit 501c3, what you want to do is define a new Customer (the U.S. government, I guess) and Job for that customer (the specific PPP or EIDL grant), maybe call it Job-PPP2020May. When the funds come in, record the receipt in a grants revenue account with designation of that job. As you spend the funds, just use your regular expense accounts that reflect the kind of work you do (e.g. labor, rent, utilities, materials, whatever) but attach the job code. At any time, you should be able to run an Income Statement By Jobs report which, in its first data column is a regular overall Income Statement, and which uses following columns for each job. So you can see explicitly which revenues came in for the job and what specifically you spend for it. That would be easy and clear, if GnuCash can now provide the relevant reporting (see other thread). Does this make sense to you? I am, by the way, using job costing this way for the books of a 501c3 nonprofit for exactly this purpose. sincerely Don Cram On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 10:50 AM Michael or Penny Novack < stepbystepf...@comcast.net> wrote: > On 5/23/2020 11:56 AM, Adrien Monteleone wrote: > > To continue on Dale’s notes: > > > > Regardless of the real-world treatment of the funds, you can create a > sub-account in GnuCash under your bank account and treat the funds as > segregated. That will also make reporting easier as you might not need to > use a tagging system, but you might still find tagging useful for some > other dimension of categorization. (maybe you want tag transactions as > ‘payroll’, ‘utilities’, etc.) > > This is not completely unlike the situation of a non-profit receiving > a grant. Can only be used for certain purposes. In this case, when a > qualifying expense has been paid, also transfer the amount between two > liabilities, one for unconditionally owed (not used yet for purpose) and > the second for "has been used for purpose, now conditional" (might be > forgiven). The non-profit would instead have credited a "grant income" > account. > > JUST using a partition in the bank account might not reflect the actual > situation. Sure, you can transfer between the partitions when a > qualifying expense has been paid. But you do not know if that part of > the loan will have to be paid back << what is not used for a qualifying > expense WILL have to be paid back >> > > Michael D Novack > > PS: As usual, with the disclaimer that I lack credentials to give this > sort of advice. But THIS is a case where I bet most of the pros are > having problems deciding how should be done. > > > > > ___ > gnucash-user mailing list > gnucash-user@gnucash.org > To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: > https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user > If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see > https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. > - > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. > You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All. > ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
[GNC] Job Costing as now available
Hi, I recently installed and am using GnuCash (Version: 3.10 / Build ID:
3.10+(2020-04-11), on Windows). I am happy to see some functionality for
Job Costing has been added in recent years. This is very important to
develop so that many more small businesses could possibly use GnuCash. But
what is available vs. what is missing and critically needed?
Job Costing allows for projects to be defined for, say, construction firms
building individual houses, or catering firms doing catering jobs, or
manufacturing firms building batches of product. Or it allows a nonprofit
or business to define a job for a specific grant or other restricted
funding source. And then to track and match the revenues and expenses
specific to each project.
This is terribly important so that management can attempt to figure out
which jobs have been more profitable and why. And I have seen arriving
users turned away from GnuCash (e.g. a catering firm a few years ago)
because it has been so clear that GnuCash can't serve them. The catering
firm needed to do separate accounting & reports for each job, but if i
recall correctly was told that it should do it by creating new accounts
specific to each job. So its Chart of Accounts would grow longer and
longer as its Sales and various Expense types of accounts would have to be
duplicated for each repetitive client/job. It would need to create a new
account, e.g. Sales-Job#013 for the payments it received for job number 13,
and a new Food purchases-Job#13 and a new Labor-Job#13 etc. for each of its
standard type of expenses. This would rapidly become totally unworkable,
and it does not allow for side-by-side comparison of
revenues/expenses/profitability of jobs, so of course the catering person
went away. And for existing firms that do use GnuCash but have not tracked
separate projects/jobs to date, many of them could benefit if they could be
allowed to start doing so.
In the current stable version of GnuCash, it is now possible to create
jobs. For example, I created a "test b company" with several expense
transactions, and created a "job1" underneath "customer A". I can't see
yet how to assign job codes to any specific revenue or expense item. In
any account register, a new Customer:Job column needs to appear, where I
would enter the relevant job for each line ("split"). I should not be
_required_ to enter anything into the Customer:Job column, but for any
split where I do want to assign the expense or revenue to a specific job, I
should be able to do so. And, say if I pay $200 to one contractor for work
done on two jobs, I would create two splits, one for each job, and record,
say $120 of contractor expense for job#13 and $80 for job #14.
Then I want/need an Income Statement By Job report, which would be a
regular Income Statement in its first columns, and would report
job-specific income statements for each job in following columns. So this
would possibly become a very wide report, but that is okay by me, as long
as I can scroll over to see any specific job. And like for other reports,
I should be able to set Options / Display to show only the rows where there
is any non-zero data, and also only the columns where there is any non-zero
data (so in a report for Fiscal Year 2020, I don't have to see a column for
a job completed in 2018).
The only report I find, though, is the one at Reports/Business/Job, which
turns out to be some kind of Aging of Receivables report for just one job.
Instead of allowing me to run this report for all jobs (like should be
available in a general Aging of Receivables report, that should be able to
report on each customer and, for customers with more than one job, for each
job), it makes me pick just one job.
And I get only the following report (formatted more nicely than reflected
here):
Job Report: job1
test b company
05/23/2020
customer A
101 main st
Date Range: 01/01/2020 - 12/31/2020
Date Due Date Reference Type Description Amount
Total Due $0.00
0-30 days 31-60 days 61-90 days 91+ days
$0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00
Yikes, that is not what Job Costing is, at all! Has better functionality
been added in unstable new versions of GnuCash? If not, could it please be
added quickly? (allow assignment of job code to any split, allow reporting
of Balance Sheet By Job and Income Statement By Job, allow budgeting to be
broken out by job, too)
I am, by the way, using job costing for the books (not in GnuCash) of a
501c3 nonprofit, to budget and track the programs/projects/jobs that the
board wants to specifically know about for any reason, and definitely to
track the funds received and expenditures of any restricted funding.
Is it obvious that Job Costing functionality must be developed? Or am I
missing something about how it is actually more available than I can see so
far?
sincerely
Don Cram
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[GNC] Job Costing as now available
Mentioning a couple of related threads: https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-user/2020-May/091134.html https://lists.gnucash.org/pipermail/gnucash-devel/2020-May/045064.html ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
[GNC] AQbanking Amex OFX Download Badly Broken
Tried the Aqbanking section on GnuCash 3.10 with my Amex account. It was encouraging to see the latest version of Aqbanking now recognizes the content in the OFX download (last broken version could only read the headers). Was about to congratulate the development team, but then I noticed something very wrong with the few hundred transactions I had just loaded into GnuCash. None of the payees matched anything that could be matched up with any previously entered, downloaded and audited transactions. Closer inspection revealed something very wrong, and repeated on every transaction record downloaded. I compared individual transactions in my Aqbanking debug log to the ones that GnuCash had downloaded. GnuCash apparently concatenated each memo field followed by a space, followed by the transaction payee name. None of the downloaded data ended up in a valid transaction memo field. This is badly broken, and totally unusable. I examined the debug log to see how well Aqbanking has been communicating with the bank. Headers show the session established and completed properly. Transaction records and fields were being presented correctly, amounts were correctly associated with the real payees, and Amex was proving a fully formed payee name followed by a fully formed memo field . The transaction ID number was also transferred consistently in the field, though GnuCash appears to be ignoring it. Someone had to go to a lot of trouble to do this, rather than just place each usable transaction field data into the closest matching ledger fields (even the transaction ID can be useful for simple dupe checking). That's all that we're looking for. Download the data, populate the record fields, and get back to business. So I'm at a total loss how anyone could have deliberately taken clearly defined fields and data (that should easily match the "Description" and "Notes" fields within GnuCash account ledgers), and pretty much destroy them, along with the user data sets that also have to be deleted and recreated. ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
[GNC] [GNC-dev] Is the import match map still required?
The most obvious match would be to match any Transfer Accounts in the data to gnu Accounts, even if the result needs to be verified. Other comments: 1) User's rapid clicks can unintentionally select the wrong account, mapping invalid data 2) Seems there could be an opportunity for user to re-run a process to recreate map and prune the useless matches David refers to ( dates, connectors (a, and, the etc.), transaction amounts ?). With enough transactions this should be pretty good. 3) I assume the table is updated with merged accounts, ___ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. - Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
