[tdf-discuss] Re: August 2012 profits & losses

[moving this over to discuss@ only]

Marc Paré wrote:
> Suggestions:
>
> 3221 Monetary Donations With Tax Receipt
> 3223 Monetary Donations Without Tax Receipt
> 3225 Benefits in Kind With Tax Receipt
> 3227 Benefits in Kind Without Tax Receipt
> 3230 Expense Allowances With Tax Receipt
> 3232 Expense Allowances Without Tax Receipt
>
> or if the GNuCash field allows for a longer description
>
> 3221 Monetary Donations With Receipt for Tax Purposes
> 3223 Monetary Donations Without Receipt for Tax Purposes
> 3225 Benefits in Kind With Receipt for Tax Purposes
> 3227 Benefits in Kind Without Receipt for Tax Purposes
> 3230 Expense Allowances With Receipt for Tax Purposes
> 3232 Expense Allowances Without Receipt for Tax Purposes
Took the latter -

> Suggest:
>
> 2560 Travel Costs Refunds --> change to -->
> 2560 Member Travel Cost Refunds (this would take care of plane,
> train, boat, auto, mileage expenses)
>
> 2565 Members Boarding Costs --> change to -->
> 2565 Member Meal Refunds (this will take care of breakfast, lunch,
> dinners, snacks, food etc.)
>
> Add new expense account to the ledger:
>
> 2564 Member Accommodation Refunds (this would take care of hotels,
> motels, hostels, housing etc.)
>
> This will help to better identify/report travel, accommodation and
> meal expenses. It will also help in pulling up details to help plan
> for future events.
2565 is not for individual meal claims (which TDF handles via per
diems), but for e.g. a TDF officer paying the catering at LibOCon.

2560 e.g. gets all member travel reimbursals, which do not
distinguish between pure travel and per diem. So I'd rather stick
with the previous split.

As for controlling, I think beyond a certain complexity, it is much
easier to decouple expense account and budget, otherwise account
numbers explode. You can do that in gnucash with quadruple-entry
transactions.

> I wonder about account "2704 Other Costs" -- I am not sure of DE,
> but in Canada, if you add anything to this account, you must detail
> what the "other costs" are or breakout into sub-accounts under it,
> just like with what you did with the "2900 Other Costs Charitable
> Mission".
Yes, once this gets more than some 10-20 transactions, I always tend
to split up stuff into subaccounts. 

> Sorry, I should have just said that it would be nice to also get a
> "balance sheet". Now that I think of it, maybe this could be put out
> just once a year (maybe at the TDF accounting year end). In that
> case monthly accounting reports would be fine.
Indeed, there'll be a proper annual balance report.

> I used GnuCash quite a few years ago and kept having problems with
> reports and updates that would break the software and my ledger. I
> moved to Quasar which is a clone of MYOB. If you are used to MYOB,
> then you can use Quasar ... Quasar is no longer opensource, but you
> only need to buy a commercial license if you plan on using Quasar
> over a network or POS system -- the software is free to download for
> all people[2]. Solid piece of Linux accounting software and the devs
> are very accommodating -- they will literally create a binary
> package for your Linux distro if it isn't available on their site.
> Don't be fooled by their cheesy looking site, their devs are serious
> about accounting and listen closely to their user feedback comments.
I had been using gnucash for personal accounting without trouble, so
it was kind of a natural pick to me. For scaling up to SMB size
(what basically TDF is today), I had briefly considered sql-ledger,
but then went for gnucash anyway - it's quite easy to learn basic
use, it runs on the platforms LibreOffice runs on, and sharing
ledgers is trivial. Guiding principle beyond that was, to run all
core TDF operations via Free Software. 

> I took a look at Concardis ... no EN version on their site. Does it
> offer service in EN? I am not in the loop, is it being used with
> TDF/LibreOffice transactions?
Yes, our new donation via credit card runs on their backend. And
thanks for asking btw - always good to have more eyeballs on these
things!

Cheers,

-- Thorsten

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