Using GnuCash for VFW Accounting

Well they do! VFW Quartermasters are required to keep Post accounting books. Procedures only address manual/paper ledgers and reports. This is fine for a small Post that only writes a few checks a month. Automated ledgers are allowed, but paper backup is required.

I was not about to use a paper ledger and decided to use GnuCash (http://gnucash.org) several years ago. GnuCash is a full fledged double entry accounting system somewhere between Quicken and Quickbooks and it's free!

I had developed a Rails Web Based system to help me with my Quartermaster tasks, but is was fairly customized, including my interface to the GnuCash data.

GnuCash was set up to use the VFW's version of Fund Based Accounting. This became fairly simple and could be used by any Post or any organization that uses fund based accounting (most non-profit organizations)

I'll point out that we do not use GnuCash as our main accounting system, although we could. We have an Accountant that handles mainly payroll and taxes and we send them the information they need (in reports or source documents). We basically use it as a checkbook, fund manager and enter stuff from the accountant (payroll checks, eft or forms to pay taxes etc). I also summarize income and expense from our customized post management system (sales, donations, etc).