[Linux4christians] Church Accounting Software? - L4cD Vol 82, Issue 5

[Georges]

Le dimanche 06 février 2011 à 22:52 -0500,
linux4christians-request at thelinuxlink.net a écrit :
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:42:31 -0600
> From: Rob Matlack <okie2003 at gmail.com>
> To: linux4christians at thelinuxlink.net
> Subject: [Linux4christians] Church Accounting Software??
> Message-ID: <1297014151.7621.38.camel at rob-E6510>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
> 
> I am not an accountant, but I am trying to set up our church's books
> on
> gnucash. The task is more difficult than I expected. From reading it
> seems the problems is that churches use a different accounting method
> than most businesses.
> 
> Churches need to keep track of accounts such as Gen Fund, designated
> gifts, VBS, Awana, missions, etc. plus donor records for end of year
> reports for tax purposes. Does anyone have a template for gnucash for
> this or know of some good software that can easily do this?
> 

If the church already has used some form of double-entry bookkeeping to
manage their funds then it should be a relatively easy matter to
duplicate the chart of accounts in GnuCash.

Prior to retirement I did oversee our IT Department's support for a
rather large professional accounting system (the accounting department
had almost two dozen employees) and have personally used Quicken and M$
Money 2004. I've only worked with GnuCash for the past four weeks but,
so far, find it to be quite a bit better than either of the former
products I have used.

It is essential to get one's mind around the basic concepts of
double-entry accounting and GnuCash has an introductory tutorial just
for that purpose. One essential point is that one has to get used to
using accounts rather than categories, but with accounts and nesting
sub-accounts one can have a truly logical chart of accounts. 

I've not yet explored the support available for GnuCash but am hopeful
that you will find all you need.

Must admit that as a teenager I thought double-entry bookkeeping was
keeping two sets of books, one for the company and the other for the
government. Turns out that's not supposed to be the case.

All the best to you and your project,

Georges