Moving/Mergin Accounts

[Bryan Lucas]

Is there an option in PCS that allows you to move/rename account numbers to another number and merge two acocunt into one? We have a small section of our chart that has run out of room & would like to renumber to provide room without having to start the year and chart over from scratch. Thanks!

Bryan

[Zaphod]

Unfortunately, no. There is no way to merge two accounts into one. You'll either have to start your accounting year over (see this article for more information) or wait until the year is over, and you close at that point.

Sorry.

[Eden Whitehead]

I'm not sure if I'm asking the same question Bryan did, or not. (And I apologize for the length.)

I think I have waaay complicated things and want to un-do it if possible/appropriate.

In a bank account separate from general checking we have monies associated with one General Memorials account and two memorial accounts that are designated for a specific purpose (e.g., a camp scholarship fund; a music fund). A year ago when I initially set up PC+ I set up all 3 accounts as temporarily restricted (i.e., income, release, and equity accounts associated with each; I also set up related expense accounts).

During the year several of our older saints passed on. At each occurrence, I set up a separate restricted memorial account, thus generating an income, release, and equity account for each individual along with an associated expense account. I'm thinking now this was excessive since no family member and no donor specified any particular use for gifts that were made in memory of the deceased person.

(In Contributions I also set up an account at each passing. In retrospect I see that the records in Contributions would have sufficed to track the gifts made in memory of each individual, as the church committee wished to know, and I did not need to go to all this effort in Fund Accounting.)

The goal now is to eliminate from Fund Accounting the small handful of non-designated memorial accounts and move the associated equity into the General Memorials equity account.

Let us say that the bank account where all the memorial gifts are deposited is 01-1230-000;
the income account associated with General Memorials is 01-4240-000,
the release account is 01-4840-000,
and the equity account is 01-3240-000
(and an expense account 01-8240-000).

When Mr. Smith passed away, I set up a restricted memorial account in his name that resulted in income account 01-4241-000,
release account 01-4841-000,
and equity account 01-3241-000
(and I set up the totally unnecessary, I suppose, expense account 01-8241-000).

Friends of Mr. Smith gave a total of $450.00 in his memory.

What do I do so that the $450.00 "moves" from the Mr. Smith Memorial to the General Memorials? What do I do to delete all the accounts associated with Mr. Smith's memorial? (Or do I just want to make them inactive?)

Assuming I post all this to December 2008, do I have to close December 2008 for the changes to show up in all the reports?

I am looking for all the guidance I can get (general strategy for things of this nature as well as specific how-to help).

Thank you in advance, all you wonderful PC+ forum friends!

Eden, who is still ...

[Jeff]

In 2004 it was not possible to combine accounts. When version 9 shipped it included a way to combine 2 accounts together. You have 2 options to you for your restricted accounts. You can combine the accounts together or you could create journal entries to move the balances and set the accounts to inactive.

To do journal entries, if you were going to do this at the year end, here is what I would do.

• 1. Create a journal entry to transfer the balance from 01-3241 to your general 01-3240 account.
  2. Set the 01-4241 & 01-4841 accounts to inactive.

The advantage here is it is easier and these changes will not change historical data.

The second option is to combine the existing accounts. To do this you would:

• 1. Combine the 01-3241-000 with the 01-3240-000 account
  2. Combine the 01-4241-000 with the 01-4240-000 account.
  3. Combine the 01-4841-000 with the 01-4840-000 account

The advantage for doing it this way are the accounts you set up for memorials are gone. The disadvantage this method effects historical data. If you run an balance sheet or inc & exp statement for Jan 2008 after making these changes it will look different than you presented to the committee then.

Let me know if you need further information on either method.

[Eden Whitehead]

Jeff,
Thank you so much for your very helpful answer. I think I will probably go with the first option you suggested (in order to retain historical data). I also greatly appreciate your offer of follow-up help on this. I'll let you know if I need it!

Eden