User Support Forum

We agreed with our pastor, as a convenience to him, to pay Guidestone $157.50 each month for his insurance and annuity and then to take $78.75 from each check for his payment. We handled this through a pass thru account. Our accounting for each check was as follows:
Check 6931:
Debit Credit

Payroll 2049.38
Pastor’s Salary 1328.13
Housing Allowance 800.00
Annuity & Ins. Pass-thru 78.75

Our pastor resigned effective end of April and after we had paid our first half payroll told us he had cancelled his insurance and annuity with Guidestone effective March 1.. We had not paid Guidestone for March and since we had deducted $78.75 from his check on the first half payroll we reimbursed him on the second half payroll by adding $78.75 to his salary. Accounting for this check was:
Check 6954
Payroll R. H 2206.88
Pastor’s Salary 1406.88
Housing Allowance 800.00

We know this accounting is bad because it does not clear the pass-thru account and misstates the Pastor’s Salary.

We tried to add the 78.75 to the pastor’s income when processing the check, but could not since we have no pay item for the pass thru account.

We considered making an OOB entry to clear the $78.75, and letting the pastor’s salary be and we thought about a simple JE crediting the pastor’s salary and debiting the pass-thru account.

Possibly, we could add the annuity and insurance pass thru account as an income item, but this doesn’t sound right and we don’t need it any more.

Hopefully, we have overlooked something simple and will appreciate advice.

Many thanks –

Bob Daniel, Treasurer, Meadowbrook Baptist Church

Just an observation ... you should have used a liability account for the deducted money, not a pass thru. The reasoning is that you took on the liability to pay the insurance for the pastor.

As far as the reimbursement, you could have created an income pay item for it, and used the 'pass thru' account as the expense account the money was coming from.

That said, you didn't make a mistake on the pastor's salary unless the insurance was taken out as an 'after tax' item. If it was a pre-tax deduction, than adding it back as a taxable item is fine. If it was an after tax item, you can create the income item as a 'non-tax' income.


What you can do now is once you figure out how to do the reimbursement, void the existing check in payroll, create the new check with the proper income setup, and reissue the check using the same number. Post everything in Payroll, and the proper transactions will be created for Funds Accounting. Post those transactions in FA, and you should see the 'pass thru' account zeroed out.

Of course, do a backup prior to doing any of this

Thank you Neil for your prompt and timely advice -

Bob

I have a question regarding payroll. Due to a lot of accounting problems we decided to restart PowerChurch as of January 1st. We had entered checks and contributions through January before deciding to just restart the year.
My problem is since I had already done January's payroll (we get paid once a month) I re-entered them as a manual check along with all the other checks that had been written in January. Well, we noticed in March that the system had never deleted the original payroll, so it had a double entry for January. I went in and deleted the manual checks I had written. All is good in payroll but the accounting side is off. It is only showing the manual checks I wrote and then deleted, not the original ones, AND when I went in and deleted the manual ones it made the money coming back as a deposit of $5,000+, when it should have zeroed it out. And in the budget report it's showing that we are done one paycheck for the year and that we have $5,000+ more in our account then we should have.
Does this make sense? How do I fix it?
Thank you in advance,
Deb

I just noticed this question. If you start a new question instead of tagging it on the end of another one, we are more likely to see it quicker.

I am not sure that the system did not delete the original payroll. I think it had to.

You had to enter a lot of numbers to get through the ACCOUNTING SETUP and PAYROLL SETUP after hitting RESTART ACCOUNTING.

It is likely you either entered a beginning bank balance that was inconsistent with the payroll data you entered, or you entered an outstanding payroll check when prompted.

Can you look at your bank reconciliation window and see if there is an entry for that January payroll as an outstanding check?

Also, have you done a bank reconciliation since hitting RESTART ACCOUNTING?

John,

I'm fairly sure that when you restart accounting, the payroll data does not get wiped. Its the same with Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable.

Neil: It's been awhile since I hit the RESET ACCOUNTING button, so that may be the case.

If so, that means that the original transactions for payroll did not get wiped out, and would still be in the payroll module, but not in fund accounting.

It still relates to the beginning balance that was typed in during the SETUP ACCOUNTING wizard.

Apparently, the beginning balance typed in assumed the money had not been taken out for payroll, when the bank had already received the checks and given out the money out of the "real" bank account. Therefore, when the entry was made and voided, the PowerChurch balance would exceed the "real" bank account by $5000.

If the above assumptions are correct, the correction transaction involves a CR to the checking, and DB all of the payroll accounts according to the payroll that was run in January. You can run a report in the Payroll module to confirm that this payroll was run. If so, do this in Fund Accounting / Enter Transactions:
CR 01-1110-000 checking $5000
DB 01-5120-000 gross wage
DB 01-5120-000 housing?
DB 01-5130-000 Fed W/H?

If you go to File -> Preferences -> Accounting Setup and click the Restart button, this wipes out the history from both the Fund Accounting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Payroll. Additionally in Payroll, this will delete tax tables etc but the employees will remain. With this option, you can get back into the setup assistant for both Fund Accounting and Payroll.

If you post and close months in Fund Accounting and choose the Delete Old Data option, this doesn't affect anything but Fund Accounting. The check and payment history is still in the other modules just not in Fund Accounting.

Zaina wrote:If you go to File -> Preferences -> Accounting Setup and click the Restart button, this wipes out the history from both the Fund Accounting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Payroll. Additionally in Payroll, this will delete tax tables etc but the employees will remain. With this option, you can get back into the setup assistant for both Fund Accounting and Payroll.

If you post and close months in Fund Accounting and choose the Delete Old Data option, this doesn't affect anything but Fund Accounting. The check and payment history is still in the other modules just not in Fund Accounting.

Zaina ... it clears out PAYROLL information too ??? Never realized that .. hate to say this, doesn't sound like a good idea.

9 times out of 10, if someone wants to redo accounting, its because they have problems with the chart of accounts in funds accounting, but Payroll is usually OK. If they want to restart the accounting, how you do save the existing employee check and tax history ??

When you click the Restart Accounting button, this is what comes up on the screen:

Warning:
You have chosen to setup your accounting again. By doing so, ALL information entered to any of the accounting modules will be deleted. This includes unposted and posted transactions or payments, Payroll item descriptions, your Chart of Accounts, etc. The only exceptions are vendor records (but default account numbers are removed), employee records, and Accounts Receivable customer records.

The Accounting Setup Assistant will aid you in setting up the accounting section of the program again, including your Chart of Accounts. It will be as if you are starting your accounting in PowerChurch for the first time.

It is strongly recommended that you make a backup of your accounting before proceeding with this process.

NOTE: If you want to start your accounting over again, but keep your existing Chart of Accounts, DO NOT use this process. Instead, use the Delete Old Data option in Fund Accounting to start your accounting over and still keep your Chart of Accounts.

You save it by deleting old data. Close months and in version 11 and 11.5, you go to Setup -> Delete old data.

This preserves the Payroll information including check history etc. You will still be able to print tax documents, that information is no longer detailed in Fund Accounting only in Payroll. If you post or delete all data close all months with data posted to it and then Delete old data from that last month something was posted, you get a screen that asks if you are attempting to restart.

If you answer yes, all Fund Accounting balances are set to 0 and all detail is gone from Fund Accounting only.

Answering no will delete only the detail but leave balances in there that include the effect of the Payroll but not the information...in Fund Accounting. Neither of these options deletes the Payroll info IN Payroll.

Clicking the Restart button on the Accounting Setup Options screen, wipes out the history of Fund Accounting, Payroll, Accounts Payable and Receivable.

Thanks ... didn't realize the Delete Old Data function allowed a restart of FA only ... good to know.