> On 23 Aug 2019, at 14:48, Adrien Monteleone <adrien.montele...@lusfiber.net> > wrote: > > The business features certainly offer some perks with respect to reporting, > reminders and info lookups. > > I’d probably take that approach in some fashion if I had to tackle the > problem myself. > > However, if the only reason you are considering using them is simply to > handle multi-dimensional reporting, consider this: > > The Transaction Report (as well as some other reports) can be filtered (with > regular expressions, not just with other accounts) and that report in > particular can have 2 sorting dimensions with sub-totals. One could also > apply a view filter to an account or run a search and then run an ‘Account > Report’ from the result. > > For multi-dimensional issues, I’d solve those by using the ‘Description’ > field as one dimension, and the ’Notes’ and/or ‘Memo’ fields as additional > dimensions. (the Action fields might also be useful here) This would be in > addition to the regular ‘Account’ field as the primary dimension. > > You might even be able to keep all donations in a single account or a small > handful of accounts, greatly simplifying your CoA and other organization > reports. > > Consider booking the donations using the member name as the Description and > putting the destination in the Notes or other fields. You could also track > the sources such as ‘Foundation Dinners’ if you’ll have more than one, and > the need to do so, in any other unused fields. > > As long as you are consistent in where the information appears, a semi-custom > filtered report could be achieved. > > The drawback to regular transactions would be issuing reminders, but that > could be accomplished by employing a ‘receivables’ type account that would be > filled with scheduled transactions for each member, and then the actual > payments would reduce those balances as transfers to some other account to > accumulate donations YTD. (this would be a second layer of transaction info, > not the tracking of actual funds moving around) You could then run a report > based on such accounts. > > The only drawback to this approach would be if you also needed GnuCash to > double as a member ‘database’ with address, contact info, etc. In that case, > making all members ‘customers’ might be the better route because such > information already has a place to be stored without having to shoe-horn it > into individual transactions. (but even that would be possible, and auto-fill > will greatly assist with data entry) > > > Regards, > Adrien
Thanks, Adrien. Plenty of food for thought there! I’m not desperately keen on using free text in the Description and Notes fields because minor variations in spelling might well cause a transaction to be missed, but I can see that this would greatly speed up data entry. I’ve already set up an Asset account called “Members’ Commitments”, which will be populated (e.g.) as members commit to being paying guests at a Foundation Dinner, and then reduced to zero once a suitable date has been negotiated, the meal eaten and payment received. I can foresee a lot of revisions going on until I settle down on a workable method. Regards, Michael _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
