Restricted income vs regular income

[debbieg]

As I have been trying to straighten out the errors between our contributions and accounting side, another issue has popped up.
We have a regular budgeted expense account called "Youth Camp" which is part of our Student Ministries. I had thought that it was basically an account that would accept registration payment from the students (credit) and pay out all necessary expenses for camp (debit). Now I find out that there will be money brought in to help pay for camp through love offerings and fund raisers. If church members give money through these areas it should show on their contribution statement. Money that is paid as a camp registration is not shown as a charitable contribution.

I'm thinking now that I need to set up separate income accounts....one being a temporarily restricted account and the other being a regular income account (probably with a sub-account number to tie to the Youth Camp expense account). Does this seem correct? If so, then I guess I need to set up all the pieces that go along with a restricted account (assets, income, release).
thanks,
debbie

[NeilZ]

Debbie,

somehow I don't think you have to. You can have a tax deductible Contributions Fund point to this account to reflect the fundraisers/offerings that offset some of the costs. And you can also use the account either through accounts receivable to reflect a payment for registration & fees that way, or you can have a non-deductible Contribution Fund setup to account for those fees.

We kept the range of Contribution Fund numbers for deductible contributions separate for any that were used to account for anything else.

IE: 0 thru 999 - deductible contributions
1000 & higher - non-deductible contributions/money.

In this way we could easily show the deductible contribution funds on a contribution statement, without the non-deductible funds appearing.

[debbieg]

Neil, not to be dense but let me see if I understanda what you're saying:

Instead of tying the contribution fund to an income account or liability account (like the pass-thru funds), I would tie it to the budgeted expense account? This seems like it would make life a lot easier than dealing with restricted funds and releases. Would that make sense to use for any category that has a budgeted amount but also has donations?

Also, I had already started separating my contributions funds by numbers to group regular funds, pass-thru funds and restricted funds. I was only using 3 digits but I think I'll follow your scheme and go to 4 digits. Then I could make an association between related funds like
0300 - Youth Camp (charitable contributions)
1300 - Youth Camp (registration)
Debbie

[NeilZ]

Neil, not to be dense but let me see if I understanda what you're saying:

Instead of tying the contribution fund to an income account or liability account (like the pass-thru funds), I would tie it to the budgeted expense account? This seems like it would make life a lot easier than dealing with restricted funds and releases. Would that make sense to use for any category that has a budgeted amount but also has donations?

Also, I had already started separating my contributions funds by numbers to group regular funds, pass-thru funds and restricted funds. I was only using 3 digits but I think I'll follow your scheme and go to 4 digits. Then I could make an association between related funds like
0300 - Youth Camp (charitable contributions)
1300 - Youth Camp (registration)
Debbie

You got it.

For instance, we have a budgeted line item for flowers. This has a small budget as not every week we get a donation for flowers. However, when we do, the money is entered through contributions, and the person will see it on their statement.

The flower account is updated directly from contributions. When flowers are paid for, they are paid out of the account. There may be a surplus at the end of the year, but that is rolled over to the next.