Accounting for gifted merchandise

Vicki Cotton
Vicki Cotton
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud Altru® General Discussions
We have a small gift shop. Occasionally we pull an item from the shop and donate it to an event, silent auction, VIP, etc. We mark the item with the adjustment tag "donated". How are people handling tracking the revenue from merchandise that is donated? Because right now, in the accounting side, we purchase the item for the gift shop, but never see any revenue. 


Any ideas are appreciated.
Tagged:

Comments

  • Dianne Crosby
    Dianne Crosby
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    When the item is sold at the event, does the money go into the store's revenue account?


    If so, instead of doing an inventory adjustment I would just "sell" the item through daily sales.  You could change the retail price before and after the transaction if needed.  
  • Vicki Cotton
    Vicki Cotton
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
    Hi Dianne, 


    The item is not sold. It is just removed from the gift shop and given to the recipient. This produces a net loss recorded in the Gift Shop budget. The money to cover the cost of the item comes from another account. Usually anything money from items sold from the Gift shop goes back into the budget for the Gift Shop. However, when these items are simply removed, there is no way for the Gift shop to recoup the lost income into their budget. 


    Just wondering what others are doing in these situations.
  • Nina Cunningham
    Nina Cunningham
    Eighth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1
    Hi Vicki,


    We don't "sell" our items that we donate (either to other organizations, or for giveaways to volunteers, usage by our Hort staff, etc), I just go in to that merchandise item and adjust the inventory, using the reason for the change as volunteer, hort usage, etc. Then we run a report through Query sorting by reason, and our finance person uses that for Quickbooks and other reports.


    Hope that makes sense, feel free to reach out to me if you have questions!

Categories