Beginnings of draft of NPO Ledger CLI tutorial.

npo-ledger-cli-tutorial.md

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+Non-Profit Accounting With Ledger CLI, A Tutorial
+=================================================
+
+Non-profit organizations (NPOs), particularly 501(c)(3) charities in the USA,
+have their own specific accounting needs.  These often differ from for-profit
+accounting needs.  For example, for-profit-oriented systems often make
+problematic assumptions about the workflow of accounting tasks (often because
+NPOs rely primarily on donations, rather than fee-for-service or
+widget-selling income).  Also, non-profit income is categorized differently
+than for-profit income, and the reporting requirements vary wildly from their
+for-profit equivalents.
+
+This project is designed to provide some basic templates, tutorials, workflow
+documentation and scripts to handle accounting for an NPO.  The primary
+example is a
+[direct project (aka Model A) fiscal sponsor NPO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_sponsorship#Models_of_fiscal_sponsorship).
+
+This tutorial was written primarily based on
+[Software Freedom Conservancy](http://sfconservancy.org/)'s use of Ledger CLI
+from 2008-10-22 to present for its own accounting needs.  While Conservancy
+has done well using this system, and believes that its account system meets
+Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), this document **does not**
+constitute advice from a CPA nor legal advice for a non-profit that seeks to
+comply with relevant state and/or federal accounting requirements for USA
+non-profits.  The authors make no representations nor warranties regarding
+this information and this information is provided for discussion purposes
+only.  Readers of these tutorial and templates are urged to seek professional
+advice from a CPA and/or tax legal counsel in constructing an accounting
+system appropriate for your organization.
+
+Furthermore, given the authors' limited knowledge of accounting requirements
+outside the USA, the suggestions herein probably are not particularly useful
+at all for organizations outside the USA.
+
+Configuration of Chart of Accounts
+----------------------------------
+
+The first thing any accountant will ask to see if your so-called "chart of
+accounts".  The first time I heard this phrase, I thought it was something
+complicated.  Fact of the matter is, it's really just a list of all the
+accounts that you use.  Accountants also use "account codes", which, as near
+as I can tell, are of primary interest because they get better sorting.
+Ledger CLI doesn't really support account codes, so I've ignored them.
+
+The real place that Ledger CLI stores your chart of accounts is if you use
+the `account` directive along with the `--pedantic` CLI option.  This will
+ensure that only accounts you declared explicitly will used.
+
+### Asset Accounts
+
+Our recommendation for asset accounts FIXME.
+
+
+### Reporting The Chart of Accounts
+
+The
+[`general-ledger-report.plx` script in the `non-profit-audit-reports` Ledger CLI contrib directory](https://github.com/ledger/ledger/blob/next/contrib/non-profit-audit-reports/general-ledger-report.plx)
+will generate a file called `chart-of-accounts.csv`, which is the chart of accounts.
+
+Copyright and License of This File
+----------------------------------
+
+This specific document, the README.md file for npo-ledger-cli, is copyrighted:
+  Copyright © 2013, Bradley M. Kuhn
+
+This document's license gives you freedom; you can copy, modify, convey,
+propagate, and/or redistribute this software under the terms of either:
+
+    * The GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
+      Foundation, Inc.; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option)
+      any later version (aka GPLv3-or-later).
+
+    * *or* the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States
+      license, as published by Creative Commons, Inc. (aka CC-By-SA-USA-3.0)
+
+In addition, when you convey, distribute, and/or propagate this document
+and/or modified versions thereof, you may also preserve this notice so that
+recipients of such distributions will also have both licensing options
+described above.
+
+A copy of GPLv3 and CC-By-SA-3.0-USA can be found in the same repository as
+this file under the filenames GPLv3.txt and CC-By-SA-3.0-USA.txt.  If this
+document has been separated from the repository, a
+[copy of GPL can be found on FSF's website](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt)
+and a
+[copy of CC-By-SA-USA-3.0 can be found on Creative Commons' website](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/legalcode).
+