Temporarily Restricted Fund Money Transfer

[Dennis Patrick]

I run Power Church Plus, Vesion 9. Within Accounting Fund 01, I account for several temporarily restricted funds. The Memorial Fund committee wants to give $2000 to the Building Fund--both of these temporarily restricted funds are in Accounting Fund 01. I'm uncertain how to go about accomplishing that transaction. It would seem the simplest thing to do would be to debit the restricted net equity account of the Memorial Fund for $2000 and credit the restricted net equity account of the Building Fund for the $2000. If I enter that transaction, do I also need to use the release account for the Memorial Fund? I would think not, but I'm not sure.

[Zorak]

You don't need to do the release from restriction, since the purpose of that is to pull the money out of the restricted equity.

[rcwoodcock]

I run Power Church Plus, Vesion 9. Within Accounting Fund 01, I account for several temporarily restricted funds. The Memorial Fund committee wants to give $2000 to the Building Fund--both of these temporarily restricted funds are in Accounting Fund 01. I'm uncertain how to go about accomplishing that transaction. It would seem the simplest thing to do would be to debit the restricted net equity account of the Memorial Fund for $2000 and credit the restricted net equity account of the Building Fund for the $2000. If I enter that transaction, do I also need to use the release account for the Memorial Fund? I would think not, but I'm not sure.

I assume Dennis has described the transfer correctly? That's how I do it, but it results in a very confusing Statement of Activities Report that makes me wonder if I've done it right.

For example, members gave $200 to CCCC and I set up a pass-through account intending to write them a check. Then the Board decided to administer funds for CCCC ourselves and asked me to transfer $1,000 from our Benevolence Temp Restr account to a new CCCC Temp Restr account.

I debited the Benevolence account for $1,000, the pass-through account for $200, and credited the new CCCC account for $1,200 as Dennis described. Then I reimbursed a member for expenses and released $137 from the CCCC account.

The Balance Sheet shows a correct CCCC account balance of $1,063.

The Statement of Activities report is quite bewildering. It shows no income for the CCCC account, Temp Restricted Release of $137 from the CCCC account, and at the end of the report a Direct Change to Equity of $200, presumably what I transferred out of the pass-through account into the CCCC account. I assume the $1,000 income to the CCCC account must appear on the Statement of Activities report as income to the Benevolence account from which I transferred the money?

This is very confusing and doesn't explain to me what is happening in these accounts. I have several other transfers between Temp Restr accounts, so I wanted to be sure I am doing the transfers correctly. Should I be looking at a different report that will be more clear?