Account Balances

[sam]

I am setting up my chart of accounts again. I have my separate funds 01-1111 general, 02-1111 compassion, 03-1111 fellowship, etc., with all of my funds. I understand if I have a previous balance I can put this in his asset account. But I need to apply previous balances to separate accounts in a fund (04-discipleship, 4564 campership income, 5564 campership expense). The Board wants doesn't want to see the money totaled in the discipleship fund, they want to see the 1200.00 applied directly to the campership income. Is there a way I can do this and still keep campership under the discipleship fund? I really don't want to have to set this up everytime the Board wants to see the balance from last year with the income and expenses of this year.

[Zaphod]

If I'm understanding what you're saying, you're asking how to establish balances in an income or expense account. At the end of an accounting year, your excess income and expense is rolled into your fund balance, and all your income and expense items start the year at zero. To create an income or expense balance, you need to enter a journal entry to said account and offset the fund balance account (3001 in most setups). For instance, to insert a starting balance of $1200 to this account, you'd do this:

04-4564-000 CREDIT $1200
04-3001-000 DEBIT $1200

That will do what I *think* you're asking.

[sam]

This works, however, it also shows this as income for January of this year. I wonder if there is a way to not show this transfer of funds from the previous year as additional income for this year?

[Zaphod]

Not really, since it's not supposed to be that way in the first place (income accounts are supposed to start the year at 0).

In version 9, the transfer accounts will be a special account type that's separate from the income and expense section.

[Jeff]

Sam,

I think there has been some confusion. What is your board wanting to see exactly? If I read your post correctly, it sounds like you have multiple types of restricted money all being handled in the 04-Discipleship fund.

The purpose of income and expense accounts is to show how much money has come in or gone out for a period of time. They do not show balances remaining. To keep track of a current balance, you need a balance sheet account. The balance sheet keeps track of the current balance, you then use the income and expense accounts to see what the activity has been for a period.

In version 8.5 and prior this is usually done by creating sub-accounts on your bank account. One for each area that you need to keep track of. Version 9 will add some new features allowing you to keep track of these restricted amounts with a different method.

Take a look at this link for information: http://www.powerchurch.com/support/answ ... icle_id=21