Getting Ready to Use PowerChurch for Accounting

[mvanlaan]

We have used PowerChurch for about 6 years for our membership database, event scheduling, etc.

Now, we are going to begin using the Accounting module. I'd like any suggestions that people have for how to best set it up for our situation ...
-- We have one primary (bank) checking account and one primary (bank) savings account that each have $ from several funds: General (operating) Fund, Building (debt reduction fund), Capital Improvements Fund, Missions Fund, plus several smaller designated funds.
-- We have other checking/savings accounts for our High School Youth Ministry, for an overseas missions ministry, and a few others.

Do I set up several PowerChurch "Funds"? One for the General Fund, one for the Building Fund, one for the Capital Improvements Fund, one for the Missions Fund, etc.? These all share the same bank accounts.

I'm pretty sure I want to set up separate PowerChurch "Funds" for the High School Youth Ministry account and for the overseas missions ministry, etc.

The only place that we have payroll expenses is through the General Fund.

Any help/advice is appreciated in advance. I've been through the PowerChurch Plus (version 11) manual in pretty good detail and I've done a couple of trial set-ups in PowerChurch.

We are planning to upgrade from from PowerChurch 11 to 11.5.

Thanks.

[JohnDMeyers]

If you have an activity that has many income accounts and many expense accounts, it makes sense to create a separate fund.

For example, an active building project will have accounts for general construction, electrical, plumbing, heating, etc. What we usually do is create a separate fund while the building project is taking place, then roll the new building asset into the General Fund once it is completed.

If you have a church school, you may want to create a separate fund for that.

It sounds like you have a youth ministry, which may have a few income accounts for special events, and a few expense accounts. We keep ours in the General Fund. It has four income accounts and six expense accounts, I believe.

Most churches create a separate fund for Missions. There are a lot of income accounts for various people, and various events, and many expense accounts. For that reason, it makes sense to create a separate fund.

We have a college ministry with many events. We treat it like our youth ministry, and keep it in the General Fund. We have about 4 income accounts, and 4 expense accounts.

Using the GROUP and Detail account listings helps group similar functions together within the same fund.

The default chart-of-accounts has a pretty good outline for a starting point, by the way.

[mvanlaan]

Thanks John. Yes, I saw the default chart of accounts and that was helpful. It looks like we will have to set up multiple funds, just because of the way we want to look at things separately. Also, we will use sub-accounts so that a different group of ministry people can look at reports across funds.