Closing books and opening as a new church

[jbsproul]

I have a very interesting problem and I dont know how to handle it.
Our church is reorginizing under a new name and new corporation, this is to take effect before end of accounting year. How do I close books on old corp. and open a new one with same membership and same finances.
And how would I handle contributions from people who have given to both corps. I have tried to get them to wait till Jan 1 , but have had no luck
Help!!!


Jerry

[DebbieR]

Others will undoubtedly have a better answer, but we did this with a mission organization which used Powerchurch. What we did as sent out the contrib letters from GVCM - Washington. Then we forwarded the membership data to GVCM - Wichita. We also wrote a check (we changed banks as we changed states) to Wichita for all the money in hand. They started as if new, the money going into general fund (as loose offering if I am not mistaken, but I didn't do that part as I was Washington).

You could do the same thing. Start your new church as if you just got a copy of the new program with balances in various accounts. Send Year End statements (it doesn't have to be the end of they year to send them) from the old church accounts. and write a check or withdrawal or zero out the old.

Back up the membership data and then restore just the membership module with no contrib and away you go.

[NeilZ]

I have a very interesting problem and I dont know how to handle it.
Our church is reorginizing under a new name and new corporation, this is to take effect before end of accounting year. How do I close books on old corp. and open a new one with same membership and same finances.
And how would I handle contributions from people who have given to both corps. I have tried to get them to wait till Jan 1 , but have had no luck
Help!!!


Jerry

Here's an idea of what I would do, it will take two copies of Powerchurch to do this.

One to remain as the main Powerchurch networked version, the other as the resource to print the end of year contributions statements for the IRS. Before you do anything here, determine the cutoff date to switch to the new church name/corporation. Then do not use the accounting functionality again. FWIW ... if possible, I'd do payments manually for a month until you're sure all the checks that have been written against the old accounts have cleared. Then I'd enter these manual payments after you restart accounting in the newly named system.

Part A - standalone copy
1. Do a backup of the current database using PC+ backup.
2. Install a standalone copy of Powerchurch on any church computer from the original installation disk. Do not open this copy of Powerchurch for use just yet.
3. Install the latest Maintenance Release.
4. Open this copy of Powerchurch, it will ask if you're upgrading, say NO. The next item that appears asks for the church information. You can basically dummy up all the info EXCEPT[/i] for the registration number. That has to be correctly entered.
The system will then create empty database files .. no problem.
5. Do a RESTORE from the last backup you made of the church files.
6. Verify the data is correct in this standalone version.

Part B - Current Networked Version
1. Have the System Administrator sign on and change the church name in the Preferences => System Setup Options
2. Have the SysAdm go into the Contributions menu and delete old data from both the contributions and pledges, this is to begin with a clean slate here. You can now enter contribtuions to this database HOWEVER, do not post any contributions to accounting until after the COA has been recreated in step 5 below.
3. Do NOT use the accounting functions in this copy, if necessary have the SysAdmin remove all permissions to change and delete items in accounting from all current users. This is to make sure no one adds anything to this system. Remember, new bank accounts, new account numbers ... manual tracking until everything clears the other accounts.
4. When the other accounts have had all transactions cleared. Get the final balances from that system for all accounts.

This next part will give you a chance to fix any problems with your current COA, so have any changes you want to do planned out .

5. Have the SysAdmin go into Preferences => Accounting Setup and click the Restart Accounting button there. This will wipe everything from the database, and will present a clean slate. However, be ready to setup the COA from scratch and have those opening balances ready, along with any manual checks written against the new accounts since it was opened.
6. Post all contributions to accounting, making sure that the contributions are credited to the correct months.


From one user to another, this should work.