Splitting a Fee Between Band Members and a bank account

[SoundOfTheCrowd]

Hi

I'm hoping you can guide me towards the right approach to this.

We played a gig on Monday and earned £400.  Each of the four band members got £90, I gave £20 to someone who helped out, and we put £29 into our Kitty, which is a fund we build up to over any group expenses.

I can't work out how to represent that within the software, and would appreciate some advice.  It seems as if I have to attribute £100 earnt to each band member, which isn't accurate.

Thanks very much. 

Mick.

[arlo]

I assume the £29 is a typo that should be £20. Anyway, the proper way to document this is with three transactions:

1. An income transaction for £400, received by you and shared by everyone.
2. An expense transaction for £20 ("someone who helped out"), paid by you and shared by everyone.
3. A deposit transaction for £20 (band kitty), paid by you, deposited to your fund and shared by everyone. (This assumes you're using the Fund function to track your savings. If not, you could enter this as another expense.)

When those are entered, you can look at the Totals page and it will show that you owe £270 and everyone else is owed £90. You can then enter one distribution transaction for £270 and shared by those three people, or individual distribution transactions of £90 for each person.

[SoundOfTheCrowd]

Hi Arlo

Apologies for the very late response on this - I did look at it before, but couldn't make it work in my head - the bit I'm confused about is how I represent the shares in the event itself - all I can see that the system will let me do is put in £100 for each of us, but that doesn't match the reality.  Can you clarify for me please?

Thanks

Mick. 

[arlo]

You have income, expenses, savings and earnings. Earnings are income minus expenses and savings. So think of your bandmates as earning £100 each, then contributing £5 for expenses and £5 for savings. That's three transactions and will leave each bandmate with earnings of £90.

[SoundOfTheCrowd]

Thanks Arlo

So how do I represent that in the Event?  The full amount would be 400 - do I put that in the Event shares as £100 each, even though each band member only gets £90?

[arlo]

Yes, the event shares must add up to the total income amount. However, you can leave the shares empty and then everyone will just see the total amount. That can be free text, so you could write something like "$400, minus $20 expenses and $20 savings".

Another option if you don't want your bandmates to think about anything other than their final earnings is to enter their shares as 90 each and your share as 130 (90 income + 20 expenses + 20 savings), then pay the expenses and savings out of your income (select only yourself in the Shared By field). And then the savings will all be attributed to you, so when you eventually spend the savings, you would need to set only yourself in the Shared By field in the Expense or Withdrawal transaction to balance that out.

I would do the first option in a band that has a stable membership with transparency about the finances and a generally equal share of income and expenses, and the second option in a band that has rotating members who don't know what the other members are earning and the leader is acting like a business owner with the band members as subcontractors.