Updating opening balance

[marthomasfo]

Hello,
We have been using this software since 2006 and this is the first time I am in charge of finance in our church. We have many organizations in our church like sunday school, youth, VBS etc and all the money coming from and to are managed in this accounting software. We have two checking accounts and couple of CDs in our church but these organizations do not have any bank accounts. All the income and expenses are managed by the church.

We were using only one Accounting Fund for all the accounting purposes and right now I added one for each organizations (I guess that is the right way to do it, correct me if I am wrong). By doing that I can see the balance of each organizations by running Accounting Fund Balance report. I have updated the database (updated Acct in FAMSTRD table) and now I am able to see the details I want.

But the problem is that some of the organizations had opening balances in 2006 but it was not entered properly. I wanted to enter the opening balance of these organizations so that their balances will be accurate. Please note that by doing so it should not change the overall balance of the entire organization.

I am a software person and I can manipulate the data by running a query from DBManager.

PLEASE HELP
Thanks
Abraham

[JohnDMeyers]

Sorry, I am not familiar with directly manipulating the database files. It may be possible to make a 2006 entry, for all I know.

If I inherited an accounting system as you describe, and the opening balance from 2006 was missing, I would make an entry in May 2009, but I would consider dating it Jan 1, 2009 and posting it in May, just to make it clear that it represents an opening balance correction.

DB bank account $amount
CR unrestricted net assets $amount

and indicate that it a correction for an opening balance in 2006.

As far as putting VBS and Sunday School in separate accounting funds, it depends on how much activity is involved.

If either has multiple income accounts and multiple expense accounts, then I would consider it.

If either has one income account and one expense account, I would probably leave it as part of the general fund.

[marthomasfo]

Thanks John,
I have updated the data as you mentioned and it is showing up correctly as I wanted. One more thing I did was I updated the transyear to 2006 and transmonth to 1 and now it is showing up correctly for all the years since 2006.

Yes, those accouts (VBS and Sunday School) would have multiple expenses and income in any year.

Thanks for your valuable input.
God bless you

Abraham