Question on Category

I am using W XP and Q 2010. I am the treasurer of a small social organization but do not have a financial background. Occasionally we run events that bring us income to finance some of our charitable activities. One of the things we do at these events is sell soda and water. The previous treasurer set up 2 categories, one an Expense category named Soda & Water and the second an Income category named Soda & Water. The purchase costs for the water and soda is posted to the Expense category and and sales receipts are posted to the Income category. I would like to be able to produce a report showing what the net from soda and water was. The only way I can do this is to manually combine the 2 figures together. Are 2 categories necessary? Can I not just have a single category and any purchases will be posted in the spend column while any sales will be posted in the receive column? Can the category be neither classified as an expense or income? Having a single category will give me a report showing the net for the category and if more detail is needed then I can have the report show the related transactions. I have used only one category, Soda & Water, as an example but there are several more categories that are giving me the same question.

Thanks for any and all help.

Reply to
trvlnmny
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Like you I'm a treasurer for a small non-profit volunteer organization ... use Win xp and Quicken 2010. You may be able to build something with a spread sheet program but we find Quicken works fine for us. We use a checking account as our primary ledger, all expenses are paid for by check using an appropriate expense category, all income is listed as deposits also using an appropriate income category. I then use the Quicken cash flow program for reports to our board. The cash flow program is a very handy tool, you can target it for whatever time period you need.

Reply to
RBroz

From a pure accounting/tax perspective you need to keep the income and expenses separate by using separate categories.

For management reporting purposes try using Tags to further identify the events. Then run a P&L by Tag to see the details by Event.

Reply to
Laura

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