Church Accounting Using Gnucash - 6: Recording Common Transactions

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Repeated Transactions

To take the words of a GnuCsh “tip of the day”, “Quick-fill makes it easy to enter common transactions. When you type the first letter(s) of a common transaction description, then press the Tab key, GnuCash will automatically complete the remainder of the transaction as it was last entered.”

Common transactions that are repeated every week can be easily entered using this tip. As most transactions have as one account either the “cash in hand”, or a “bank” account, from the accounts tree, open these accounts by double clicking on them. Go to the last row, enter the transaction. Entering the same description of a previous transaction, will autofill the rest of the transactions details.

For example in the figure below, entering the first few words of the description “Worship Expenses – Flowers” will autofill the rest of the columns, the account, and debit and credit columns. To make it even easier, only the first few words of the description are required to be entered, and just like in Microsoft excel, the rest of the description is autofilled.

Recording a subscription transaction

As mentioned in Post No 5, transactions, which are the members contributions, and need to be identified to the member, (so that the yearly reports can be made), like Subscription, Tithe, One day income, etc , need two transactions to be made. The first step is to create all tithe, subscription, etc accounts under the appropriate account head. For E.g. Income:Members Yearly Contribution:Subscription (These accounts are already in the chart of accounts attached in this document)

The two transactions to be made are:

1. Debit the members account, and credit the subscription account 
2. Debit the current asset account (cash or bank), credit the account of the member. 

Shown below are both the transactions, as shown in the in the members account, so that both can be shown together.



While entering these transactions, I find it easier to start from the cash or bank account, enter the members account id in the “Transfer” column (use another “tip of the day” to do this. “Type the first letter(s) of an existing account name in the Transfer register column, and GnuCash will complete the name from your list of accounts". For subaccounts, type the first letter(s) of the parent account, followed by ':' and the first letter(s) of the subaccount (e.g. A:C for Assets:Cash.)” – Then go to the members account by clicking on the “jump” icon in the tool bar above the screen, and there make the other transaction entry.

To check if all the transactions have been entered correctly, at the end of the entries, the members balance should be 0. This will be rolled up to the parent account. “Debtors” as well, and the balance of the “Debtors” account should be 0.

A split transaction can also be used for these two transactions - with both transactions from made from the current asset account (cash or bank) – Find screen shots below to illustrate how this is done

Transaction made from the "Cash in Hand" Account:



Transaction made from the "Savings Bank" Account:

Recording a Salary Transaction

The GnuCash Help -> Tutorials and Concepts guide has good howto for this - Go to "Chapter 14, Payroll".   Or find it online here

A salary transaction consists of several transaction entries. Typically there will be a Basic Salary Component, One or more Allowances and Benefits, and one or more Deductions and Taxes to be made, which will later have to be remitted sent to the Diocesan Headquarters, or the Government, as the case may be. These can be best entered as one split transaction:

Account	Debit	Credit
Expense:Basic Salary	100
Expense:Family Allowance	50
Liability:Vicars Contribution to PF		10
Assets:Bank Account		140
Expense:Churches contribution to PF	10
Liability:Churches Contribution to PF		10

In GnuCash it will look this:



Once this transaction is created, GnuCash’s “Duplicate” feature can be used to repeat this transaction every month. Select the transaction made the previous month, and click on the “Duplicate” button



In the window that comes up, enter the transaction data and Voucher Number



A new transaction will be created, with the given date and number. If anything else needs to be edited, Press the “Split” button to expand the split transaction and edit the individual details.

Please let me know your comments and suggestions through the comments box below.

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