These accounts contain any income of the organization, and all begin with

`Income:`.

### Unearned Income Accounts

`Unearned Income:` accounts are used to refer to revenue that is currently

received for services which have not yet been delivered.  The most typical

and common place an NPO encounters this type of income is for conference

registrations.  Since conference registrations arrive in advance of the

conference, it is not proper under accrual accounting to call it income until

such time as the conference successfully completes.

### Reporting The Chart of Accounts

The

[`general-ledger-report.plx` script in the `non-profit-audit-reports` Ledger CLI contrib directory](https://github.com/ledger/ledger/blob/next/contrib/non-profit-audit-reports/general-ledger-report.plx)

will generate a file called `chart-of-accounts.csv`, which is the chart of accounts.

The main command-line program though, that generates the chart of accounts

looks like this:

    $ ledger -f accounts/main/books.ledger -V -F "%-150A\n" -w -s -b 2012/01/01 -e 2013/01/01 reg

Note that this is bound by date.  Typically, it makes sense to list your

chart of accounts for a specific period (e.g., your fiscal year), since your

accounts might have some cruft in them from previous years that should now be

ignored.  (For example, if your organization simplified its chart of accounts

in later years, you don't want to report those old accounts that are no

longer used.)

Handling Fiscal Sponsorship

---------------------------

NPOs that do not provide fiscal sponsorship services will find this section

somewhat useless.  One of the biggest benefits of Ledger CLI is its

incredible flexibility that just does not exist in other accounting systems.

This section describes how to exploit that flexibility to provide a

separation in your books and reporting to handle earmarked accounts for

fiscally sponsored projects.

NPOs that don't need this feature can, in most cases, use the methods

described herein to deploy Ledger CLI, but should leave out the `:General:`

and `:ProjectNAME:` parts of the account hierarchy, since these are the

primary mechanisms used herein to handle the fiscal sponsorship structure.

### Earmarked Accounts

Many fiscal sponsor NPOs keep earmarked accounts for their member/affiliated

projects.  Furthermore, these projects often may either (a) terminate their

agreement with the NPO, and thus deserve a copy of their books that they can

"take away" with them, or (b) might be affiliated with *other* NPOs that also

hold accounts.  This system of earmarked accounts is designed to make it easy

for projects to have a copy of their own accounts, but not interfere with nor

even be aware of (a) the books of other member/affiliated projects, and (b)

the overall books of the entire NPO.

On the latter point, this system utilizes a directory structure and separate

`.ledger` files to separate out the different projects into different

structures.  This allows member/affiliated projects to take their data and

run `ledger` commands against it, separately and without access to the other

`.ledger` files of the NPO.

Proper Documentation For All Transactions

-----------------------------------------

Ledger CLI offers a flexible structure of tagging any entry, including

separate tags for parts of a split transaction.  This system uses those tags

to ensure proper documentation is included for each financial transaction

that occurs for the organization.

Note that since Ledger CLI is a complete double-entry accounting system, each

transaction can correspond to multiple entries in the general ledger.  The

data entry format of Ledger CLI lists each double-entry accounting

transaction in a text file.

Documentation may in fact differ for entries within the transaction.  Ledger

CLI's tagging structure is flexible in this regard: each portion of a

double-entry transaction can carry the same tag or a different tag.  For

example, in this entry:

    2012-05-03 Sir Moneybags

            ;Entity: Sir-Moneybags

            ;Invoice: accounts/documentation/org/invoices/2012-05-30_moneybags-invoice_as-sent.txt

        Accrued:Accounts Receivable:Conservancy  $100,000.00

        Income:Main Org:Donations               $-100,000.00

            ;IncomeType: Donations

The portion of the transaction that credits the `Income:Main Org:Donations`

has three tags: [`Entity`](#entity-tag), [`Invoice`](#invoice-tag) and

[`IncomeType`](#income-type).  The `Entity` and `Invoice` tags, since they're

listed at the top of the transaction, propagate through and apply to both

sides.  But, the `IncomeType` tag, which has no meaning for `Accrued:`

accounts, so it is applied only to the `Income:Main Org:Donations` part of

the transaction.

#### Receipt Tag

The `Receipt:` tag refers to receipt of some sort.  Typically, this is a

document that shows clear confirmation that the transaction has already

occurred.  The value of the `Receipt:` tag is always a valid pathname in the

Some examples of appropriate uses of the `Receipt:` are:

* a point-of-sale credit card receipt from a purchase, given by a cashier or

  sent via email after the purchase has occurred.

* a deposit slip given at the bank upon making an over-the-counter deposit of

  paper checks.

* a confirmation document showing an outgoing wire transfer made by a bank.

* a confirmation document showing transfer of funds between two bank

  accounts.

* A pay advice document generated upon payment of an invoice.

#### Invoice Tag

The `Invoice:` tag refers to an actual invoice, either generated by the

organization or received by the organization.  Typically, this is a document

that is a request for payment, rather than documenting an actual payment that

has occurred.  The value of the `Invoice:` tag is always a valid pathname in

Some examples of appropriate uses of the `Invoice:` tag are:

* an actual invoice as sent by a vendor to the organization.

* a request for payment sent by the organization to someone else.

* a reimbursement request submitted by an employee, contractor, or volunteer

  for expenses they've already incurred and would like the organization to

  reimburse (e.g., an expense report, requesting for reimbursement of travel

  expenses).

#### Statement Tag

The `Statement:` tag refers to any sort of written statement received from an

external party (or even perhaps generated internally) that provides document,

insight, or other information about the transaction.  The value of the

Some examples of appropriate uses of the `Statement:` tag are:

* bank statements, as received from the banking institution.

* written reports of travel.

* blog posts made by a contractor documenting their work.

* written organizational policies about the expense.

* just about anything that is clearly not an [invoice](#invoice-tag) nor a

  [receipt](#receipt-tag), but definitely is valid backup documentation for

  the transaction.

#### IncomeType Tag

The `IncomeType:` tag is used for all `Income:` accounts.  This refers to the

type of income.  The value of the `IncomeType:` tag is always a string.

Since this particular system is designed for USA non-profit entities who file

USA Form 990, the following `IncomeType` values are supported:

* `Donations`, which refers to standard charitable donations.

* `RBI`, which refers to "related business income".

* `UBTI`, which refers to "unrelated business taxable income.

Not that donor-advised funds and government grants don't currently have their

own `IncomeType`.  It's possible this might be necessary; the authors aren't

familiar with how to handle those items on the Form 990.  It would be a

relatively simple change to `config-tags.ledger`, though, to support other

income types, or to change it entirely to handle use-cases other than USA

Form 990 filing.

#### Program Tag

The `Program` tag is used primarily to track program activity for `Income:`

and `Expense:` accounts.  This allows for knowing what particular initiative

initiated the income (e.g., a specific fundraising campaign) and/or what

particular program activity an expense is toward (e.g., funding travel to

some specific conference).

The Program tag is always a string with the same format as a Ledger CLI

account (primarily for use with Ledger CLI's `--pivot` and `--group-by`,

[as described later](#testing-program-success).

### Expense Account Documentation

The only exception to the standard tagging requirement is when the payee has

been modified to indicate that the expense was `NEVER CHARGED`.  This is an

historical special-case.  The solution was originally design for the

following scenario:

Suppose an expense was expected — for example, a situation where you

gave a credit card number to charge something and the charge never came

through — but it turns out the charge never happened.

The recommended way to resolve this problem in the system is to just delete

the entry entirely from the Ledger file, and allow the VCS to log the fact

that the charge was expected, but the vendor never billed the credit card.

The reason the `NEVER CHARGED` payee text was added was to handle the

situation where the books included this charge, but the books were already

closed for the financial period (e.g., the books had already been audited).

Changing the payee was a method for documenting the expense.  You might use

it like this:

    2011/05/28 My Bad Billing Hosting - NEVER CHARGED

        Liabilities:Credit Card:Visa            $-100.00

        Expenses:Conservancy:Hosting             $100.00

    2012/01/01 My Bad Billing Hosting - REVERSAL - NEVER CHARGED

        Liabilities:Credit Card:Visa             $100.00

        Expenses:Conservancy:Hosting            $-100.00

However, going forward, you'd likely never enter anything the ledger

**until** you had real proof via an Invoice, Receipt or Statement that showed

the Expense did/should occur.  This use of `NEVER CHARGED` in the payee is

thus deprecated.

Analysis of the Data

--------------------

If this methodology is followed, Ledger can be used to analyze the financial

data for the organization.

### Testing Program Success

If you use the [`Program`](#program-tag) tag effectively, you can easily test

the successes of various fundraising programs with a command like this:

    $ ledger -f accounts/books.ledger --pivot Program bal '/^Income/'

Meanwhile, using the  [`Program`](#program-tag) tag for Expenses can help

track what programs are costing with commands like hese:

    $ ledger -f accounts/books.ledger --group-by 'tag("Program")' reg '/^Expense/'

FIXME: example output

Copyright and License of This File

----------------------------------

This specific document, the README.md file for npo-ledger-cli, is copyrighted:

  Copyright © 2013, Bradley M. Kuhn

This document's license gives you freedom; you can copy, modify, convey,

propagate, and/or redistribute this software under the terms of either:

    * The GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software

      Foundation, Inc.; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option)

      any later version (aka GPLv3-or-later).

    * *or* the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States

      license, as published by Creative Commons, Inc. (aka CC-By-SA-USA-3.0)

In addition, when you convey, distribute, and/or propagate this document

and/or modified versions thereof, you may also preserve this notice so that

recipients of such distributions will also have both licensing options

described above.

A copy of GPLv3 and CC-By-SA-3.0-USA can be found in the same repository as

this file under the filenames GPLv3.txt and CC-By-SA-3.0-USA.txt.  If this

document has been separated from the repository, a

[copy of GPL can be found on FSF's website](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt)

and a

[copy of CC-By-SA-USA-3.0 can be found on Creative Commons' website](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/legalcode).