User Support Forum

We are opening a bookstore at our church. I've never processed income other than contributions before. Where would I enter the income from book sales and which report would I run to show the income?

Lbuford wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 24, 2025 12:05 pm

We are opening a bookstore at our church. I've never processed income other than contributions before. Where would I enter the income from book sales and which report would I run to show the income?

This type of income could be entered using the Accounts Receivable module which would track sales, however, this may be overkill for what you're doing here.

Frankly, you would not run the income from sales through Contributions. You would enter a transaction through Funds Accounting. You would need to create a new income account, and frankly, you also need to talk to the church board about how these funds would be tracked.

As a separate Accounting Fund outside of operations, a donor restricted fund, where the funds can only be used to operate the bookstore, then profits released from the restricted fund, to the non-restricted operations; and so on.

There's a bit more to this than just entering a deposit transaction. Have you thought about what your state requires for any sales tax, and other requirements. Just because the church is listed as a non-profit, doesn't mean that sales at a affiliated store are not taxable.