Subscription Accounting & Transaction Flows

A subscription records and keeps track of all invoices & all cash received on an invoice with respect to a single promise/pledge.  So the subscription is the key record to view the current status of a pledged amount.

Invoices that are created by a pledge inform the donor that an installment of the pledge is due to be paid, and records in Gnosis whether the payment has been received.

If a Subscription is set up as accrual-based, then initially, it tells the accounting system via an accrual batch transaction what the full amount of the pledge is.  Then, as payments are received, that accrual entry is updated with actual payments received against the invoices generated by the subscription.

Here is a diagram illustrating this:

You will not see any subscription payments directly in the Contribution entry screen when you load contributions for a batch.  This is because contribution entry only deals with single gift contributions, and ongoing contributions (aka subscriptions) use the invoicing system and not the individual gift entry system.

See Also: Subscriptions, Invoices and Contributions Explained