Add money to Petty Cash Account

Sam Butler on

I can't figure out how to add money INTO the Petty Cash
account. Help.

Sam Butler
WIN Club

Laurie Frederiksen on

Dear Sam,

We recommend that "off the books" petty cash accounts no longer be used. You can record non
deductible expenses in regular (on the books) accounts. If you collect extra cash from your members
to have available to cover such expenses, just record it as member payments into whichever
financial account that you deposit it into.

Laurie Frederiksen
bivio Inc.

Jonathan Smith on

How do you create a petty cash account that does that
contribute to the overall value of the club or members?

Laurie Frederiksen wrote:
> Dear Sam,
>
> We recommend that "off the books" petty cash accounts no longer be used. You can record non
> deductible expenses in regular (on the books) accounts. If you collect extra cash from your members
> to have available to cover such expenses, just record it as member payments into whichever
> financial account that you deposit it into.
>
> Laurie Frederiksen
> bivio Inc.

Eric Dobbs on

Jonathan Smith wrote:
> How do you create a petty cash account that does that
> contribute to the overall value of the club or members?

You can't create a petty cash account in bivio. We do
import existing petty cash accounts from CA3 and the like,
but there's no way to create such an account within bivio.
You don't actually need a petty cash account and they're
just unnecessary work. We strongly discourage clubs from
asking members to make contributions that do not "contribute
to the overall value of the club or members".

With very few exceptions, money from club members should be
entered as payments. Any club expenses that are not tax
deductible should be entered as non-deductible expenses.

Eric Dobbs
bivio Inc.

Rip West on

There may have been some confusing, if not conflicting, answers given in this thread about Petty Cash. let me try to clear things up.

In the olden days, NAIC decreed that Petty Cash accounts would be used for items that were not deductible for income tax purposes. This being so, Petty Cash accounts were not included in the total valuation for a club, and member deposits to petty cash were not added to the member's basis in the club. Because Petty Cash accounts were not part of the clubs regular books and records, we started to call them 'off the books Petty Cash Accounts'. One of the many good things that bivio introduced was the idea of non-deductible expenses. Now, you could enter a non-deductible expense into any regular cash account. IClub soon followed suit. However, both bivio and IClub had to accommodate the old-style 'off the books Petty Cash accounts. They do this by allowing them to be seen but they are still not a part of the records.

So, when Eric says 'You can't create a petty cash account in bivio', he is talking about the old-style off-the-books petty cash accounts. You can't create them. However, you can create a petty cash account which operates like any of your cash accounts. Suppose the treasurer keeps a cigar box with about $10 in it for postage, etc. You can create this in bivio, and even call it 'Petty Cash'. When you put $10 in it, you will enter a transfer from whatever account the $10 came out of. When you spend any part of the $10, you will record the disbursement as you ordinarily do. If you still have the old-style petty cash account, do yourself a favor and get rid of it. If you want to establish a new Petty Cash Account, feel free to do so.

Rip West
Saint Paul, MN

Sam Butler on

Hello.
Petty Cash is an account that we need. Petty Cash shouldn't
be off the books. I wish Bivio would add the Petty Cash
Account and make it functional. As a treasurer, I try to
keep all the transactions as transparent as possible.
Keeping Petty Cash out of the accounting program is not
transparent. - Sam

Jonathan Smith wrote:
> How do you create a petty cash account that does that
> contribute to the overall value of the club or members?
>
> Laurie Frederiksen wrote:
> > Dear Sam,
> >
> > We recommend that "off the books" petty cash accounts no longer be used. You can record non
> > deductible expenses in regular (on the books) accounts. If you collect extra cash from your members
> > to have available to cover such expenses, just record it as member payments into whichever
> > financial account that you deposit it into.
> >
> > Laurie Frederiksen
> > bivio Inc.

Laurie Frederiksen on

Hi Sam,

What kinds of things would you like to use such a Petty Cash account to record?
Laurie Frederiksen
bivio Inc.

Eric Dobbs on

I definitely complicated this conversation. Let's see if I
can untangle my little part.

Once upon a time EasyWare (a long gone competitor who used
to provide club accounting software) provided an account
named Petty Cash. Transactions in that account didn't
didn't effect valuations or units, didn't show up on tax
forms. That's what I mean when I say "off books." We can
import those "Petty Cash" accounts and for backward
compatibility we honor the expectation that transactions in
that account are off the books.

I think it's safe to say that those accounts were a bad idea
-- they created more problems than they solved. In our
software you can only create accounts which are on the
books. You cannot create an account that's off books except
by this rare case where you import one from old software.

I misread Jonathan Smith's question in my earlier reply.
Very sorry about that. Back to Jonathan's original email:
"How do you create a petty cash account that DOES that
contribute to the overall value of the club or members?"
(emphasis is mine). And also Sam's email: "Petty Cash is an
account that we need. Petty Cash shouldn't be off the
books."

Just create an account. Specifically, from the Accounting >
Accounts page, click on the "new account" icon. Give the
account a name and click the OK button. Simple as that.

(To avoid confusing ME in the future, name it something like
Cigar Box instead of Petty Cash and don't say anything about
"off books." ;-)

Sorry again for confusing the conversation.

Eric Dobbs
bivio, Inc.

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