New user entering old bank statements for history

[isaiahvi]

I just purchased PCP 11.5. I have no accounting experience, so I'm still learning this "fund accounting" stuff. Our church did not have any detail reports in the past and only provided summary reports in MS Word....yes lots of manual calculations that were prone to human errors!

I would like to go back a few years and enter all bank transactions (from old bank statements) into PCP so that I can report on historical data for trends.

1. I noticed that PCP will only let me go back to 2007. Why?

2. I'm not exactly sure how to do this properly in the Accounting module. Has anyone done this before? After I have entered all of the transactions on the bank statement in the Enter Transactions screen, the module does not let me save because it is not in balance. It is quite possible that I am entering this information in the wrong place or I'm just not understanding this.

Any help is appreciated!

[JohnDMeyers]

I can't answer your first question from the PowerChurch perspective. They might have a good reason for choosing 4-years to go back to enter stuff.

I can answer from a user's perspective. It would take a long time to go back and enter 4 years worth of transactions. Usually, at our annual meeting, the balance sheet shows a comparison from last year to this year, and that is satisfactory. Do you really need to enter 4 years worth of past info?

Here's how to make each entry in Fund Accounting / Enter Transactions

for a deposit into a checking account:
DB 01-1110-000 checking
CR 01-4010-000 income (you can have many income accounts to choose from)

for an expense:
CR 01-1110-000 checking
DB 01-5010-000 expense (you can have many expense accounts to choose from)

It sounds like you are trying to enter multiple entries at once. For example, many checks totaling $500, can be done like this:

CR 01-1110-000 checking $500
DB 01-5010-000 expense1 $150
DB 01-5025-000 expense2 $250
DB 01-5710-000 expense3 $100

The debits and credits must match in order to post.

[NeilZ]

FWIW .... the IRS says that there is no specific length of time financial records need to be maintained but they do give a guideline of 4 years for income and expense records according to IRS Pub 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations.

Now, do you really need to put all that data into the system. I wouldn't.

We just started using Powerchurch at this current church for bookkeeping about 2 years or so ago, before my wife was called here. Prior to that everything was on paper, and I mean everything.

They just started from scratch, entering data at the top of the year, and kept the old paper as reference. We're starting to slowly throw out stuff from the late 90's. Some of it is done in the dark of the night as some of the former trustees don't 'hold with this electronic record thingy' ...

[isaiahvi]

I can't answer your first question from the PowerChurch perspective. They might have a good reason for choosing 4-years to go back to enter stuff.

I can answer from a user's perspective. It would take a long time to go back and enter 4 years worth of transactions. Usually, at our annual meeting, the balance sheet shows a comparison from last year to this year, and that is satisfactory. Do you really need to enter 4 years worth of past info?

Here's how to make each entry in Fund Accounting / Enter Transactions

for a deposit into a checking account:
DB 01-1110-000 checking
CR 01-4010-000 income (you can have many income accounts to choose from)

for an expense:
CR 01-1110-000 checking
DB 01-5010-000 expense (you can have many expense accounts to choose from)

It sounds like you are trying to enter multiple entries at once. For example, many checks totaling $500, can be done like this:

CR 01-1110-000 checking $500
DB 01-5010-000 expense1 $150
DB 01-5025-000 expense2 $250
DB 01-5710-000 expense3 $100

The debits and credits must match in order to post.

Thanks for the detailed response as it was very helpful. I just figured out my problem....I wasn't doing "double-entry accounting". I was only taking information from the paper bank statement and just entering it into PCP as single transactions. This is why I was not balancing. I did a quick search on google regarding double-entry accounting and spent some time just learing this method and I seem to get it now. As I said in my original post, I'm not an accountant, but I'm trying to do the best I can for our small church. Thanks again for your willingness to help with your detailed reply....I appreciate it very much

[isaiahvi]

FWIW .... the IRS says that there is no specific length of time financial records need to be maintained but they do give a guideline of 4 years for income and expense records according to IRS Pub 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations.

Now, do you really need to put all that data into the system. I wouldn't.

We just started using Powerchurch at this current church for bookkeeping about 2 years or so ago, before my wife was called here. Prior to that everything was on paper, and I mean everything.

They just started from scratch, entering data at the top of the year, and kept the old paper as reference. We're starting to slowly throw out stuff from the late 90's. Some of it is done in the dark of the night as some of the former trustees don't 'hold with this electronic record thingy' ...

Thanks for the information about retention which is very helpful for me.

Yes, I know it's a lot of data to enter, but I don't know how else to report and trend our financial situation over the past few years. The church is actually asking for this information. We bank with Wells Fargo bank and have been able to download a csv file of all the data, but I'm not sure how I can get this into PCP....or is this something that is part of PCP's paid service?

Like I said earlier, I'm not an accountant, but was put in this position because of my IT background and can hopefully get these paper documentations into our computer

[NeilZ]

FWIW .... the IRS says that there is no specific length of time financial records need to be maintained but they do give a guideline of 4 years for income and expense records according to IRS Pub 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations.

Now, do you really need to put all that data into the system. I wouldn't.

We just started using Powerchurch at this current church for bookkeeping about 2 years or so ago, before my wife was called here. Prior to that everything was on paper, and I mean everything.

They just started from scratch, entering data at the top of the year, and kept the old paper as reference. We're starting to slowly throw out stuff from the late 90's. Some of it is done in the dark of the night as some of the former trustees don't 'hold with this electronic record thingy' ...

Thanks for the information about retention which is very helpful for me.

Yes, I know it's a lot of data to enter, but I don't know how else to report and trend our financial situation over the past few years. The church is actually asking for this information. We bank with Wells Fargo bank and have been able to download a csv file of all the data, but I'm not sure how I can get this into PCP....or is this something that is part of PCP's paid service?

Like I said earlier, I'm not an accountant, but was put in this position because of my IT background and can hopefully get these paper documentations into our computer

Unfortunately, I don't think they can do an import of this type of data, as it is raw data, and probably does not have information as to what area made the purchase, what account to expense, and so on.

What I would do is everything that is older than one year, do not enter. Use spreadsheets to collate that data, and to present the information.

What exactly is the church board looking for ?? This may be a situation where hiring an accountant to put the historical data together is worth the cost, and just use Powerchurch for all your transactions from now on.

[JohnDMeyers]

We bank with Wells Fargo bank and have been able to download a csv file of all the data, but I'm not sure how I can get this into PCP.

I think you would better off putting this CSV information into a spreadsheet, like MS Excel, and using that to show trends. That is what spreadsheet software is good at.

PowerChurch is more for the nuts-and-bolts of Contributions, Membership, and Accounting, not trend graphs, trend lines, etc.

In fact, I could open the last four years of data in our PowerChurch, but I never do. I show trends every month to our board by exporting a report from PowerChurch to MS Excel. In MS Excel, it's click-click, and I can add a 3-week moving average and a 13-week moving average. PowerChurch cannot do that.

I think spending time to put four years of data in PowerChurch to produce trend information is, frankly, a waste of time, because it is the wrong tool for the task.

[isaiahvi]

FWIW .... the IRS says that there is no specific length of time financial records need to be maintained but they do give a guideline of 4 years for income and expense records according to IRS Pub 1828, Tax Guide for Churches and Religious Organizations.

Now, do you really need to put all that data into the system. I wouldn't.

We just started using Powerchurch at this current church for bookkeeping about 2 years or so ago, before my wife was called here. Prior to that everything was on paper, and I mean everything.

They just started from scratch, entering data at the top of the year, and kept the old paper as reference. We're starting to slowly throw out stuff from the late 90's. Some of it is done in the dark of the night as some of the former trustees don't 'hold with this electronic record thingy' ...

Thanks for the information about retention which is very helpful for me.

Yes, I know it's a lot of data to enter, but I don't know how else to report and trend our financial situation over the past few years. The church is actually asking for this information. We bank with Wells Fargo bank and have been able to download a csv file of all the data, but I'm not sure how I can get this into PCP....or is this something that is part of PCP's paid service?

Like I said earlier, I'm not an accountant, but was put in this position because of my IT background and can hopefully get these paper documentations into our computer

Unfortunately, I don't think they can do an import of this type of data, as it is raw data, and probably does not have information as to what area made the purchase, what account to expense, and so on.

What I would do is everything that is older than one year, do not enter. Use spreadsheets to collate that data, and to present the information.

What exactly is the church board looking for ?? This may be a situation where hiring an accountant to put the historical data together is worth the cost, and just use Powerchurch for all your transactions from now on.

Yes, you're right. I think that's what I'll do. Just start with data from a few months ago and go forward. I can enter all that other bank statement stuff into MS Access or Excel for reporting. Thanks again for all your help

[isaiahvi]

We bank with Wells Fargo bank and have been able to download a csv file of all the data, but I'm not sure how I can get this into PCP.

I think you would better off putting this CSV information into a spreadsheet, like MS Excel, and using that to show trends. That is what spreadsheet software is good at.

PowerChurch is more for the nuts-and-bolts of Contributions, Membership, and Accounting, not trend graphs, trend lines, etc.

In fact, I could open the last four years of data in our PowerChurch, but I never do. I show trends every month to our board by exporting a report from PowerChurch to MS Excel. In MS Excel, it's click-click, and I can add a 3-week moving average and a 13-week moving average. PowerChurch cannot do that.

I think spending time to put four years of data in PowerChurch to produce trend information is, frankly, a waste of time, because it is the wrong tool for the task.

Thanks John for the wise advice! That's what I will do now.