Balance Report Not Balancing
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david@ogbc
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2010 1:10 pm
Balance Report Not Balancing
I'm new to powerchurch as well as office management and I'm stumped. I believe I correctly set-up everything to start in January by carrying over our Dec figures and everything balanced. After posting all the transactions for January, which balanced, I look at the balance report and I have a overage in my liabilities and equity. I did manual transactions for the month other than payroll (manual checks), and I thought I had everything correct. I did the same for Feb. and the the overage increased. I want to stop the bleeding before I move into Mar. but I cannot figure out what I did incorrectly to make these figure not balance. Any advice on where to look.
Re: Balance Report Not Balancing
If you run a trial balance report at the end of each month, the debits and credits for each accounting fund should be equal, the total (DB-CR) at the end of trial balance report should be zero. I'm assuming that in your case the debits and credits don't equal when you say that you are out of balance.
If you check each transaction for checks that are written, the asset account, usually checking account, should show a credit and expense account should show a debit. For income the asset account would show a debit and income account a credit. I find that most mistakes occur when wrong account numbers are inadvertantly used. If you have more than one accounting fund, you might have mixed debits and credits for more than one fund. Remember when you enter a transaction, the debits and credits must equal not only for total transaction but also within each accounting fund. Power Church will let you enter transactions that are not balanced within each fund but it will give you a warning message when you save transaction.
Run a trial balance for Jan and see if that shows zero total at end. If not, then you have an error somewhere in the transactions entered. One you find errors in one month, go to next and you should be able to find the errors for each month.
Let me know if this doesn't answer your question.
If you check each transaction for checks that are written, the asset account, usually checking account, should show a credit and expense account should show a debit. For income the asset account would show a debit and income account a credit. I find that most mistakes occur when wrong account numbers are inadvertantly used. If you have more than one accounting fund, you might have mixed debits and credits for more than one fund. Remember when you enter a transaction, the debits and credits must equal not only for total transaction but also within each accounting fund. Power Church will let you enter transactions that are not balanced within each fund but it will give you a warning message when you save transaction.
Run a trial balance for Jan and see if that shows zero total at end. If not, then you have an error somewhere in the transactions entered. One you find errors in one month, go to next and you should be able to find the errors for each month.
Let me know if this doesn't answer your question.
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david@ogbc
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2010 1:10 pm
Re: Balance Report Not Balancing
I ran a trial balance and it shows everything as balanced. That is why I am stumped. I have state taxes (pay quarterly) and a love offering in the liabilites, will this affect the balance? The numbers don't add up so I did not think this would cause a problem. It seems everything I added is correct but somehow doesn't compute. Thanks for any help!
Re: Balance Report Not Balancing
I'm not sure what you mean when you say it doesn't balance. If you don't mind, send me a balance sheet report and show what items you are concerned about. On a balance sheet report, the assets and liabilities won't be the same. The difference is the fund balance in that accounting fund. So what you are looking for is that liabilities + fund balance should equal your assets.
I"m a little confused when you say that you have an offering listed as liability. Normally, I would enter a special offering as income which would increase your asset balance and fund balance. If you entered offering as a credit to income account, you would debit your asset account, normally checking account. If you used liability account, you would have to debit liability acount to balance the income credit, which would decrease the liability account total. This also would not show the correct asset balance and you would not be able to reconcile your bank statement against the asset account balance.
You could enter the offering as a debit to asset account and credit to liability account. This would work, but when you spend the offering amount later you have to remember to debit the liability account and credit the asset account. Using this method, an income and expense report won't include these transactions
Hope this helps, would be glad to review your balance sheet if you want to send it to wsample@charter.net.
I"m a little confused when you say that you have an offering listed as liability. Normally, I would enter a special offering as income which would increase your asset balance and fund balance. If you entered offering as a credit to income account, you would debit your asset account, normally checking account. If you used liability account, you would have to debit liability acount to balance the income credit, which would decrease the liability account total. This also would not show the correct asset balance and you would not be able to reconcile your bank statement against the asset account balance.
You could enter the offering as a debit to asset account and credit to liability account. This would work, but when you spend the offering amount later you have to remember to debit the liability account and credit the asset account. Using this method, an income and expense report won't include these transactions
Hope this helps, would be glad to review your balance sheet if you want to send it to wsample@charter.net.
Re: Balance Report Not Balancing
A friendly hint :wms7328 wrote: Hope this helps, would be glad to review your balance sheet if you want to send it to wsample@xxxxxx.xxxx.
Its not always a good idea to put your email address in the open here. This forum can be read by those who would use these addresses for SPAM.
The best way to do something like this is to contact the person through the Forum email system which will send an email to the address the person lists, without having the address 'live'.
Neil Zampella
Using PC+ since 1999.
Using PC+ since 1999.
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david@ogbc
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Mon Jan 25, 2010 1:10 pm
Re: Balance Report Not Balancing
wms7328, E-mail sent. Thanks for the help!
Re: Balance Report Not Balancing
Just to end this discussion for everyone else that might read it. David traced his problem back to the balances he had used when he set up PC when he started in Dec, 09. When you start out with PC, you have to be sure and use the corect asset balances for the various accounts you are going to track.
One thing I also recommended for David was to always make a backup of accounting files before you start making corrections. Then if your corrections don't have the intended effect, you can always just restore the data using the backup and be back where you started. Just be aware that any changes made to accounting after the backup was made will be lost when you restore to that backup.
One thing I also recommended for David was to always make a backup of accounting files before you start making corrections. Then if your corrections don't have the intended effect, you can always just restore the data using the backup and be back where you started. Just be aware that any changes made to accounting after the backup was made will be lost when you restore to that backup.