Copy Chart of Accounts as Template

[R.V.Fagan]

I've been setting up a new parish, and in the process we have learned a lot about some of the features of PC+ which consequently has caused us to make many many many journal corrections, still with multiple restricted funds out of balance from reality.

Is there a way to export the architecture of my present Chart of Accounts (CoA) without any of the balances (a blank CoA) and then start a NEW install using that CoA?

[JohnDMeyers]

The RESET Accounting option will keep your Chart of Accounts intact and zero-out the figures in Fund Accounting and Accounts Payable. It will not affect Contributions. (I think I have that correct. It has been two years since I hit the RESET switch).

[NeilZ]

The RESET Accounting option will keep your Chart of Accounts intact and zero-out the figures in Fund Accounting and Accounts Payable. It will not affect Contributions. (I think I have that correct. It has been two years since I hit the RESET switch).

UM ..... do a full backup first, as the Help text says this about the Restart Accounting button:

Restart Accounting. Click this button to clear all recorded transactions. Your membership, vendor, employee, customer information records, and your contributions data remain in place. Use this button to rerun the Accounting Setup Assistant, recreating your Chart of Accounts.

Note: To delete data and leave the Chart of Accounts in place, refer to the Delete Old Data topics i

And yes, accounting is TOTALLY separate from Contributions, any reset of Accounting has no effect on the data in Contributions.

The only thing that will need to be done to Contributions is to verify each Contributions Fund to verify the Income Accounts that each one will post to when you post Contributions.

[Jeff]

If you do a restart in the accounting setup, that will completely wipe out your chart of accounts and all balances under the accounting menu. If you like your current chart of account and want to delete all the transactions and balances then do the following.

1. Make a current backup

2. Delete all unposted transactions from Modify Unposted Transactions

3. Go to Accouting -> Setup -> Delete old data

4. Follow the on screen prompts to delete data. When you reach the point where it prompts you for the data to delete to, select a month that will delete all of your fund accounting data. ie December 2012.

5. After deleting the data, the program will notice that it has deleted all posted transactions and will give a prompt to zero beginning balances and select a new beginning month.

6. You will need to re-establish beginning balances for all of your accounts with journal entries.

[R.V.Fagan]

So to manually re-enter all my data into fund accounting, including my contribution, I would use a printout of my previous journal file?

[JohnDMeyers]

I would suggest that you run a second install of PowerChurch with your backed-up data active as a reference for old information.

On your newly cleaned-up PowerChurch, just enter the beginning balances and start fresh.

As another alternative, here's what I did two years ago. We have a pretty complex Chart of Accounts, but it had evolved over many years and wasn't effective. I used the opportunity of the RESET accounting to totally redo the Chart of Accounts, which I am now glad that I did. It took 20-30 hours? of my time, but it was worth it.

Unless you have hundreds of accounts, and don't feel it is necessary, you may want to take this opportunity to build the Chart of Accounts the way that will serve you in the future.