User Support Forum

Hi,
My treasurer would like to see only the net amount of an ongoing fundraiser: we buy gift cards at a (small) discount, and then parishioners buy them at full price. On the normal Income and expense report, the income shows up first and then the expense is far separated later in the report. It looks like there's a bunch of income when in reality the net is a couple hundred at best. Should I set this up as an equity account where the income and expenses go against that instead of the church operations account? If it showed up on a page by itself I wouldn't mind, might show the limited income vs all the maintenance work to purchase/hold/sell them:) I understand that it is possible to set up a church operations account (01), a daycare operations account (02) (yep, got those also), and then could/should I have gift cards be (03)? Or is this complicating things?
We also have restricted and release accounts - another whole mess I'm trying to get a grip on, bc there are 9+ memorial funds and 4 separate checking/savings and MM accounts that hold those - still trying to get those set up correctly. I'm starting with the gift card fund/account bc it only has ONE income and ONE expense. Should this simply be a temp restricted/release account? It all goes through the church operating/checking account.
I'm looking for the correct but (oh please) streamlined way to set this up. Even if I can print a separate page report showing net and then have it 'buried' in the big I and E report, maybe that's the easiest solution. Thanks for any help you can give.
Jane

Andrew18 wrote:Hi,
My treasurer would like to see only the net amount of an ongoing fundraiser: we buy gift cards at a (small) discount, and then parishioners buy them at full price. On the normal Income and expense report, the income shows up first and then the expense is far separated later in the report. It looks like there's a bunch of income when in reality the net is a couple hundred at best.

(snip ... not even going to touch the rest of that right now )

Jane

OK ... FWIW ... you should be tracking the gift cards as an ASSET, not an expense as you're transferring funds from one area (checking) to another (gift cards) which are still funds owned by the congregation. When money is added to the gift card: Credit bank and debit gift cards.

I've borrowed some of this from a reply to another such inquiry by John Meyers:

Create in the CoA:
01-1910-000 gift card assets - this should fall under the 'other assets' header of 1900-000 which is the default. This should close to the usual unrestricted net assets account of 01-3110-000.
01-4122-000 gift card profit income <----closes to 01-3110-000 (only if you don't have one already)

Buy Gift Cards Certificates
CR 01-1110-000 checking: $3000.00
DB 01-1910-000 Gift Card Assets: $3000.00

Sale of gift cards (assuming that there is a $50 profit per $1000 sold)
DB 01-1110-000 checking $1000
CR 01-1910-000 gift card asset $950
CR 01-4122-000 giftcard profit income $50


Does this help?

Well of course, it is an asset, then this all makes total sense, thank you. Yes, your explanation and sample are perfect, I can set this up correctly now. I'll be chipping away at the rest of the elephant one piece at a time - thank you so much.