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- Feb 9, 2014
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I have a few questions pertaining to keeping track of transaction fees that are deducted from donation services (like JustGive) or fees deducted from payment services like Paypal. First, my formal accounting education is limited to Accounting 101 in High School many years back, and experience is supporting financial software as a computer programmer for more than 20 years. So I have a foundation but not accounting-specific expertise. Please forgive me for asking what may be stupid questions, but that's why I'm here - to learn!
I've been Treasurer for very small non-profit animal welfare organizations for about four years now. This is the context for my current question. I believe that proper procedure is to keep track of those fees deducted before the donation is passed on to us. I guess the first question is if that is a correct understanding.
The next question is to check if the way I'm doing it is correct. I have my program-specific income accounts, for example one may be called "Virtual Adoptions". I have also set up an income account called "Paypal Transaction Fees". When I record our paypal donations for this program, I do this:
Bob Smith $100 Virtual Adoptions (the gross donation amount)
Bob Smith -$10 Paypal Transaction Fee
And this makes the total into our bank account be $90 but still maintains the record of the full donation and the fees.
On another forum someone mentioned that the fees are actually a business expense so that made me wonder if I should be putting them as a positive amount into an expense account instead of a negative amount in an income account. I'm pretty sure I tried that in Quickbooks and things either didn't tally up logically or Quickbooks didn't let me use an expense account in the deposit screen... Am I doing it right?
I've been Treasurer for very small non-profit animal welfare organizations for about four years now. This is the context for my current question. I believe that proper procedure is to keep track of those fees deducted before the donation is passed on to us. I guess the first question is if that is a correct understanding.
The next question is to check if the way I'm doing it is correct. I have my program-specific income accounts, for example one may be called "Virtual Adoptions". I have also set up an income account called "Paypal Transaction Fees". When I record our paypal donations for this program, I do this:
Bob Smith $100 Virtual Adoptions (the gross donation amount)
Bob Smith -$10 Paypal Transaction Fee
And this makes the total into our bank account be $90 but still maintains the record of the full donation and the fees.
On another forum someone mentioned that the fees are actually a business expense so that made me wonder if I should be putting them as a positive amount into an expense account instead of a negative amount in an income account. I'm pretty sure I tried that in Quickbooks and things either didn't tally up logically or Quickbooks didn't let me use an expense account in the deposit screen... Am I doing it right?