### 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 Accounts

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

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.

### Tags Used In This System

A list of tags can be found in the file `accounts/config/config-tags.ledger`

in this project.

#### 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

repository to the document.

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

the repository to the document.

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

`Statement:` tag is always a valid pathname in the repository to the document.

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.

### Expense Account Documentation

     2012-02-05 Office Supply Galore - Online Order

         Expense:Main Org:Office Supplies      $35.00

             ;Receipt: accounts/documentation/org/receipts/2012-02-05_office-supply-galore.txt

         Liabilities:Credit Card:Visa         -$35.00

shows that a purchase was made at Office Supply Galore's online store for

$35.00, and the file `accounts/documentation/org/receipts/2012-02-05_office-supply-galore.txt`

contains the receipt from that purchase.

#### payee with "NEVER CHARGED"

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.

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)

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[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).