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

[Rob Matlack]

On Tue, 2011-02-08 at 00:25 -0800, Georges wrote:
> 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
> 
Thanks for the reply. I agree with your assessment. My problem was I
knew nothing about accounting and had gone through the tutorial back
before Christmas. Finally I sat down and went back through them and I
think I have it. I needed your encouragement two weeks ago when I gave
up on guncash and wasted a lot of time looking elsewhere before coming
back and trying again.