Mission Funds

[sherry10]

I am new to church accounting so I am stugling with some of the idiosyncrasies . I noticed the chart of accounts came preloaded with Missions A, Missions B & Missions C why?

When a contribution comes in for foreign missions do you consider that a income or a (payable) liability?

Thanks for the help....

[NeilZ]

I am new to church accounting so I am stugling with some of the idiosyncrasies . I noticed the chart of accounts came preloaded with Missions A, Missions B & Missions C why?

When a contribution comes in for foreign missions do you consider that a income or a (payable) liability?

Thanks for the help....

The default Chart of Accounts comes with accounts that you can either use, or delete. I believe it was intended as a starting point from which the user could adjust for their own circumstances.

When a contribution comes in for foreign missions, and it is simply a 'pass thru' from the contributor to the mission, I would say its a liability as it is an amount you are required to pay out.

[debbieg]

Sherry,
I am brand new at this myself and am just going through the setup to customize the chart of accounts. I have already changed/deleted the categories that you are talking about but I believe they were in the expense category weren't they? We have mission ministry expenses at our church that we budget for and set up in the chart of accounts. These would be things like our Spanish Ministry, Vacation Bible School, GAs, RA, etc. This is separate from the "pass-thrufunds" that we set up to track contributions made to specific associational mission ministries.
I think the set-up chart of accounts contains a little bit of everything that various churches might use. You can customize it to fit your own situation.
Debbie

[sherry10]

Thank you both so much. This is what have done. Let me know if you agree. I set the contributions to go thru as a pass thru set up in individual liabilty accounts named Home Missions and Foreign Missisions. Each month we send a flat amount to Home Missions and Foreign Missions I clear the liability accounts and expense the balance.


Thank you..again

[NeilZ]

Thank you both so much. This is what have done. Let me know if you agree. I set the contributions to go thru as a pass thru set up in individual liabilty accounts named Home Missions and Foreign Missisions. Each month we send a flat amount to Home Missions and Foreign Missions I clear the liability accounts and expense the balance.


Thank you..again

Looks like that should work !

[Eden Whitehead]

When a contribution comes in for foreign missions do you consider that a income or a (payable) liability?

When a contribution comes in for foreign missions, and it is simply a 'pass thru' from the contributor to the mission, I would say its a liability as it is an amount you are required to pay out.

How is this different from using restricted accounts?

Following lots of reading on this forum, we have set up contributions to denominational missions/ministries as donor-restricted contributions posting to donor-restricted income accounts and with related restricted expense accounts set up for when we make the pay out. So, now I'm second-guessing what we've done and wonder if the pass-thru liability is the better (read: easier) way to go. (We use pass-thru liabilities for things like Easter lilies and poinsettias--items we aren't particularly concerned about tracking via Income-Expense report.)

Thanks for any insight....
Eden

[Jeff]

The determination of when to use a pass-thru contribution versus a donor restrictions is should the contribution be considered income to the church or not.

The church where I was treasurer we made this determination by was this a program we were administering or not. If we were going to administer the program, then we would setup a donor restriction. If we were just passing the money to another group and they were going to administer it, we handled it as a pass thru.

[CPC]

I do have funds that I collect, just to turn them around, but I need them to show up on the reports for the church so we know how much we have given to missions. What do pass-thru accounts look like in reporting? I assume they don't show up in the income/expense report. So, if I want my annual reporting to show these figures I should NOT use a pass-thru?

[JohnDMeyers]

If you want to show the amounts, then set up an income and an expense account.

Collect the money as an income. Pay it out as an expense. The two will "cancel out" in a sense, but you will increase your income and your expense according to the amount of activity that happened.