Accounting for Dave Ramsey Class

[indymtc]

We are sponsoring a Dave Ramsey, Financial Peace University class. Our conference gave us 10 kits plus we purchased 10 kits to use for this class and future classes. What would be the best way to set up the accounting for merchandise purchased plus payment for the kits by participants. Not everyone taking the class would be members of our congregation as they can register on the Dave Ramsey website. Is this just a simple income and expense account situation or should I be using the accounts receivable module. If I use accounts receivable, how do I account for the purchase of kits to be later reimbursed by class participants.

[JohnDMeyers]

For a single event, with around 30 participants, using the Accounts Receivable module may be more complex than the situation calls for, unless you are already very familiar with how to use parts of the Accounts Receivable module.

For the expense account(s), I would would set up a GROUP ACCOUNT for FINANCIAL PEACE SEMINAR and have expenses like: Course Material and General Seminar Expenses as Detail accounts. Other expense accounts can be added in your situation, if needed.

I would use one Income account (Registration Income), unless there are more categories that you think of.

I would use the Contributions module to keep track of the individuals who are paying their registration. Since this is not a tax-deduction, I would set up a separate block of envelope numbers for this event, even if some of the members already have their own envelope number. The reason for this is that we always get people saying "have I paid for the event, yet?", or "do I still owe something for that event?" . By using the Contribution module, you can easily run a Fund report and see who has paid, and how much.

The reason for a separate block of envelope numbers, is so that this event will not appear on their tax-deductible receipt from the church associated with their normal envelope number.

[NeilZ]

Just a note here, in v11 when you create a new Contribution Fund, you can set the fund as either tax deductible or not, so these receipts would not be listed on the normal Contribution Statement.

This would relieve you from having to create a separate block of envelope numbers, and you can use the member's existing number.

The alternative for those who use v10 or earlier would be to use a Contribution Fund number outside of those that are normally tax deductible. Then when you create the statements, you can exclude this from the report.

For example: if you currently have tax deductible funds with numbers 1 thru 25, you could create this fund as number 500, which you would then exclude when you go to print the contribution statements.

[JohnDMeyers]

Thanks, Neil.

I haven't used that feature, yet.