Setting up chart of accounts

[NancySager]

I could sure use some help setting up our chart of accounts. We currently have about 30 funds such as children's church, women's ministries, men's ministries, building fund, various world mission funds, local missions funds, etc. The COA that was in place when I took over the books was fund 01-General Fund and 02-Designations Fund - under fund 02 is an income and expense account for each individual fund as well as a sub-category under the checking account for each individual fund... i.e. Checking is 02-1110-000 then broke down by each fund 02-1110-010 is Alpha, 02-1110-020 is Children's church, etc... Both funds 01 & 02 share a checking account so the checking in the general fund is 01-1110-000. My question is... is this way of record-keeping for fund accounting okay or should we be using separate fund accounts for each individual fund - i.e. 03-Children's Church, 04-Alpha, etc. or maybe 03-world missions, 04 - local missions and further break down the missions funds under 03 etc. I hope someone out there understands what I'm trying to say and can help me figure this out. I just want to be able to use PowerChurch to it's full capability and the way things are set up now - all the designated funds under one fund 02 seems like I'm not taking advantage of the true fund accounting capabilities of Powerchurch. Any feedback you can give me I would really appreciate. You can email me direct too - at NancySager@shaw.ca. Blessings!

[Zaphod]

That's a great question. The answer, as far as I can tell, is that either is possible in PowerChurch, you just need to ask yourself which is more beneficial, a large amount of subaccounts in one fund, or a lot of funds with only a couple of accounts in them. Given the issue you've described, a combination of the two seems appropriate. It certainly sounds like your missions warrants a separate fund, with accounts for your individual missions. Some of your other smaller funds could probably be handled easier incorporated into a designated fund. We have a document on the PowerChurch website that discusses designated gifts, and the concept is the same:
http://www.powerchurch.com/support/answ ... icle_id=21.

Here is the updated link to that document - http://www.powerchurch.com/support/answ ... icle_id=21

It sounds like this is how you have it set up now.

Of course, we're mainly technical folks here; this would probably be a question better answered by one of our teaching consultants, who are generally accountants, or someone who has a similar setup. Does anyone out there have any war stories about they have handled a similar situation in their church? Real-life working examples are always best.[/url]