Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is an Expense account, not Income.
What you are looking for is a different type of Income Statement that
does not exist in GnuCash. (the basic math is the same, you just are
looking for a 'Net Sales' figure by moving COGS to the upper part of the
report. This is merely presentational and does not change the nature of
COGS being an expense rather than an income account.
Your options are:
1. Write your own report. (not easy, and you'd have to learn Scheme)
2. Manipulate the existing report in a spreadsheet app. (still work, but
much easier and little-to-no learning curve)
Also, generally, you *do* want inventory accounts because purchases are
*not* the same as COGS.
Here are some generic transactions:
Acquisition of Inventory
------------------------
Dr. Assets:Inventory
Cr. Assets:Cash
(or Credit whatever account you used to pay for the inventory)
Sale of Inventory
-----------------
Dr. Assets:Cash
Cr. Income:Sales
Accounting for COGS
-------------------
Dr. Expenses:COGS
Cr. Assets:Inventory
(can be a separate transaction if using the Business Features, or all
together in one with the sale if done manually)
Buy or find a good Accounting 101 book, and be sure to get official
professional advice.
Regards,
Adrien
On 12/8/23 1:57 PM, Eric Chapman wrote:
(Note 1: I hope the mailing list presents this with fixed-width
characters. If it does not, but sample below of a tax form will not
appear as I intended it to.)
(Note 2: The three attached screenshots might help you understand my
question. I hope they are small enough to come through.)
In GnuCash 5.4 I have a Chart of Accounts / Account Tree that reflects
Schedule F of Form 1040 for reporting of farm business.
I use the business feature "Accounts Payable."
Here is how part of it looks:
1a Sales of purchased livestock and other resale
items $xxxx.xx <-- my sales of resale items
account
1b Cost or other basis or purchased livestock or other items reported on
line 1a xxx.xx <-- I have 3 Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) accounts that
are to be here (should be income account with debit balance [negative])
1c Subtract line 1b from line 1a $xxxx.xx
My problem:
In the Chart of Accounts / Account Tree I set up the COGS accounts as
"income" accounts. As such, in v. 5.4 the COGS accounts were not on the
drop down list of "expenses" to debit when recording purchases. So I
changed the tick mark for them and called them expenses. They worked fine.
But now when I print a report, the COGS accounts are listed down in the
expense section of the Income Statement, not up under "1a" as they
should be (and as they are "parented" an "begotten" in the Chart of
Accounts / Account Tree).
These are the workarounds I see:
(1) Change the 3 COGS accounts back to having the "Expense" attribute
before printing reports.
(2) Debit all COGS items into inventory accounts and later make journal
entries (transactions) from that inventory account to the COGS accounts.
I realize this is normal (maybe desirable, but since I'm using all of
those COGS items immediately, I thought I'd save time and not use
inventory accounts.
What I'd like:
The ability for the accounts called "Expenses" but used for COGS to be
debitable when entering "Bills" (invoices issued to me by vendors).
Are there better ways to do what I want to do, or an option to tweak
GnuCash so that I can debit those accounts as I want to?
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