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Deep Dive: Divide Revenue into Two GL Accounts

Learn how to properly account for revenue from a specific item when it should be split into two accounts.

Pete Zimek, CAE avatar
Written by Pete Zimek, CAE
Updated over a week ago

Event tickets, Ecommerce products, and dues rules are all mapped in Novi to specific items in QuickBooks. Those items, also called "products and services," are mapped in QuickBooks to the general ledger accounts that ultimately comprise your financial reports.

Selling an item directly affects your Profit & Loss Statement, specifically through the account to which the item is mapped.

From time to time, customers ask us if the dollar amount assigned to a specific line item can be spread across multiple general ledger accounts. One of the most common reasons is a desire to break dues into components to account for a revenue share with a partner organization.

It is possible to accomplish this goal of selling a single item in QuickBooks and then breaking that item's revenue into smaller portions routed to different accounts.... kind of. QuickBooks has a feature called a "bundle" which groups items together. Read this article to learn why bundles are complicated and why you should avoid using them within Novi.

If bundles aren't the answer, what can you use instead?

Two Options for Dividing Revenue Into Multiple Accounts

Mapping Dues to Two Different Accounts

If your ultimate goal is to split dues payments into two different accounts, you might want to consider creating two different dues rules, attaching separate items (and eventually accounts) to each one. The downside would be members seeing the two line items on their invoices, but you might be able to use the description field to show a reason for both lines to show (ie: year 1, year 2 if you are mapping one to revenue and the other to deferred revenue).

Using Journal Entries to Split Revenue

Another option is that you use journal entries to accomplish the goal of splitting the revenue from a single item. You will want to wait until the event or period is over and the likelihood that the accounting entries will change from refunds or credits is slim.

  • To find the sales of the particular item, run a Sales by Product/Service Detail Report and filter it to the particular item. You may even want to filter to a specific date range.

  • You should see a total for the item sales, and you'll be able to apply your percentage formula to determine what your journal entry/entries should be.

If you're not familiar with creating journal entries in QuickBooks, you can reach out to your accountant or to a QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor. If you have a hard time remembering whether an account should be debited or credited, then check out this quick guide to debits & credits.


*Ecommerce Products in Novi AMS are automatically mapped one-to-one to items in QuickBooks, so Novi allows admin users to map them directly to the general ledger accounts. Learn more about mapping accounting to QuickBooks Items.


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