User Support Forum

We run an on-going fund raiser through a grocery store. People purchase a gift card for $5.00 from the church. The gift card already has $5.00 on it for them to use. When purchasing the batch of cards, I expense the total amount to "Fund Raiser Expense". When the money comes in for the purchase of the cards, it is shown as "Fund Raiser Income". These two amount balance making it a no cost fund raiser. I'm good with how all of this is running.

Now the problem...the person doing purchasing for the church is using one of the gift cards to do the purchases. She loads the gift card using the church credit card and then uses the gift card whenever purchases are made. Problem is getting the purchases expensed properly. Example: She adds $100.00 to gift card using credit card. Purchases $35.00 worth of kitchen supplies. Billing cycle ends. I have to still account for $65.00 that was spent on the credit card, but has not been spent on supplies yet. My current thought is to create an expense account labeled "King Sooper GC" and debit that for the amount loaded onto the gift card. When she spends the money on the gift card, I would credit the "King Sooper GC" expense account and debit the proper expense account (ex. Kitchen Supplies). Would this work or is there a better way to accomplish this?

Thanks.
Sheilah
Version 11.1

Usually you would create an asset account for the balance on the gift card.

When money is added to the gift card: Credit bank and debit gift card

When money is spent from the gift card. Credit Gift card and debit expense.

Thanks for the suggestion Jeff. I set it up that way and didn't really want to have to reconcile the account. I ended up creating an expense account for loading the gift card. When the money is spent, I enter a transaction in Fund Accounting to move the expense to the correct expense category. This seems to be working. I can see the balance on the gift card in the expense account. Will see how it goes long term.

Sheilah

The problem will come if there is a balance at the end of a year. Expense accounts won't carry a balance from one year to the next. You will be okay if you zero out the balance before the end of the year.