Ledger-Cli Chart of Accounts and Mapping to Form 990

[Will Middleton]

I am brand new here and using ledger-cli to maintain the books for a new non-profit that I am involved with: RadicalxChange.org

I would like to know if anyone else out there is interested in developing a repository that creates a standard Chart of Accounts (accounts.dat) for non profits. Then we can create reports that map to the Form 990/990-EZ/990-N Non-profit IRS tax filing forms. I think we might be able to gather some grant support for such a project as well. 

I am going to start developing by myself using the only tools I know (bash, python 3.5+).

Would love it if some others want to join and/or know of some other projects that are working on similar ideas. By the way, I love the tools here. Originally I was trained an accountant, getting a MS in Accounting & Information Systems then working internal audit at a bank. I started developing in VBA during that job, then quit to pursue a MS Data Science joined the blockchain world and now am rekindling an interest in accounting after having found ledger-cli. I am very grateful for the tools here. 

[o1bigtenor]

> --
Wilst developing a standard Chart of Accounts sounds like a great idea
I would think that even in non-profits you will find variation.
Me here - - - well - - - I'm using something that my wife thinks is
insanely over complicated but business is business and my books are
for me to analyze MY business.

Rather than trying to develop a list - - - why not start with a standard?
GIFI (general index of financial information IIRC) are a set of codes
recognized by the government. The codes are slightly different between
Canada and the USA but that's sort of normal too.
I started with that list and then upped the granularity (I went from 4
digits to 10 spaced like xxxx.xx.xx.xx) this enables me to track a lot
of detail and yet the first 4 digits are the same as the related GIFI
code.
So the document I found (on a government website) was not too long.
With my greater granularity I have about 38 pages in my list.

(I'm not using all the codes but am likely using about 60% of them.
The codes are made for business use so there may be a different list
for charities. That's where I would start. Your list would then be
quite connected to anything needed to file forms or any other document
to the government.)

Ledger is so flexible - - - you will be amazed at its flexibility yet
its still very solid - - - I believe you will find Ledger time well
spent.

Regards

Dee

[Robin H. Johnson]

Some stalled but very good starting point for you:
https://k.sfconservancy.org/NPO-Accounting/npo-ledger-cli

As another NPO treasurer who run using Ledger, please count me into such
efforts of Ledger to 990 work.

I have some partial scripting to generate NPO financial statements, with
the output visible here:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Foundation:Gentoo_Foundation_Finances_FY2018

--
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux: Dev, Infra Lead, Foundation Treasurer
E-Mail : rob...@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP : 11ACBA4F 4778E3F6 E4EDF38E B27B944E 34884E85
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[Will Middleton]

Hey this is great and that starting point is good. Reviewing it now.... Looks like Bkuhn was also doing some work here in the ledger repository on Github. https://github.com/ledger/ledger/tree/next/contrib/non-profit-audit-reports

I wonder if it makes sense to merge the progress from https://k.sfconservancy.org/NPO-Accounting/npo-ledger-cli  to the GitHub repository? 

Anyways, I have only recently started maintaining my own code on Github, never contributed to a project.
What is the protocol here?
Fork the codebase and start working like bkuhn did here tree/next/contrib/non-profit-audit-reports or start a new repository?

Back to the question at hand with the Chart of Accounts.

I have attached a deep chart of accounts  fund_accounts.dat with codes that I created but I am hesitant to start using it as it seems a bit verbose.

I am not yet too familiar with the MetaData Tagging "tags" but perhaps these can be used to show Program Level and/or Grant Related Revenues and Expenditures. 

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Will Middleton <wi...@radicalxchange.org> [2019-03-10 06:31]:

> I wonder if it makes sense to merge the progress from
> https://k.sfconservancy.org/NPO-Accounting/npo-ledger-cli

> <https://www.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fk.sfconservancy.org%2FNPO-Accounting%2Fnpo-ledger-cli&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNEp2069OybTvmdiQ2z6NN5VNroc7A>
> to the GitHub repository?

I'm not sure this makes sense. The repo contains a guide on how to
use ledger for non-profits, including a proposed tagging mechanism.
It's not something that needs to be part of the ledger repo, though.

> Anyways, I have only recently started maintaining my own code on Github,
> never contributed to a project.
> What is the protocol here?
> Fork the codebase and start working like bkuhn did here

> *tree/next/contrib/non-profit-audit-reports* or start a new repository?

It depends. If it makes sense for your contribution to be part of the
repo, you can fork and send the changes back (via GitHub pull
request). But not everything needs to be part of the repo. If it's
an independent effort, you can just have your own standalone repo.

> I have* attached a deep chart of accounts * *fund_accounts.dat* with

> codes that I created but I am hesitant to start using it as it seems
> a bit verbose

Are the codes made up or do they refer to anything specific? (i.e. are
there pre-defined codes, e.g. defined by the IRS or someone)

> I am not yet too familiar with the MetaData Tagging "tags" but perhaps
> these can be used to show Program Level and/or Grant Related Revenues and
> Expenditures.

Yes, they can. There are two different philosophies: one is to put
such kind of information in the account name itself; the other is to
have a simple chart of account and put the rest into metadata. My
impression is that the professional accounting world prefers a simple
chart of accounts.

If you look at bkuhn's tutorial, you'll see that he uses the Program
tag to specify some meta information.

--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/

[Martin Michlmayr]

* o1bigtenor <o1big...@gmail.com> [2019-03-05 18:45]:

> So the document I found (on a government website) was not too long.

Do you have a link?

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Will Middleton <wi...@radicalxchange.org> [2019-03-05 15:28]:

> I would like to know if anyone else out there is interested in
> developing a repository that creates a standard Chart of Accounts
> (accounts.dat) for non profits. Then we can create reports that map
> to the Form 990/990-EZ/990-N Non-profit IRS tax filing forms. I
> think we might be able to gather some grant support for such a
> project as well.

I'm interested in this effort.

[Will Middleton]

Might be best to just start with SPI and map the 2017 filings to the 2017 statements provided

I’m still in research mode digging into the IRS software documentation for creating these Form 990s programmatically 

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Best,

Will Middleton 

Treasurer | RadicalxChange

[o1bigtenor]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 1:26 AM Martin Michlmayr <t...@cyrius.com> wrote:
>
> * o1bigtenor <o1big...@gmail.com> [2019-03-05 18:45]:
> > So the document I found (on a government website) was not too long.
>
> Do you have a link?
>

You bet:

https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pub/rc4088/rc4088-18e.pdf

page 32/3 of the pdf have some information for non-profits

Am very interested in this idea/process.

I organize my accounts somewhat like this:

date organization paid
; whatever I need to assist me (check numbers, currency of transaction
with the exchange rate when converted etc)
expense: code description (short): code (xxxx.xx.xx.xx) $xxxx.xx
asset: code description(short): code (xxxx.xx.xx.xx) -$xxxx.xx



The above mentioned was the document I started with. For me there just
wasn't enough detail
to enable the kind of granularity that 'I' wanted - - - so I started
with the 8 pages
that is the list of codes changed the number scheme (still exactly the
same first
four digits though) by adding 6 digits in the format xxxx.xx.xx.xx and
I think I have
enough granularity and my table of codes (with minimal explanations) runs well
over 30 pages.

With my system I can search on the account name AND the code (and I have
the option of searching on only the number of digits I want to use so for my
official documents I search on the first xxxx and do the massaging - - - its
why I love ledger - - - I can do what I want and it WORKS - - - thanks once
again to the dev team or John W or whomever is wherever behind this!!!!)

Regards

[Craig Earls]

The EMACS  ledger-mode code is maintained as a completely separate project on Github. 

There are a few other big projects that are highly coupled but independently maintained. 

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