Accounting Set Up

[Kidney01]

Hello,
We are trying to set up the accounting system for our church and would like someone who is using it to help us. If you are willing, please reach out to me, Pastor Jonathan, either by email at pastor@cbcsedalia.org or by call/text at (660)351-5843. We would greatly appreciate it.
Have a wonderful day in the Lord,
Pastor Jonathan

[NeilZ]

Hello,
We are trying to set up the accounting system for our church and would like someone who is using it to help us. If you are willing, please reach out to me, Pastor Jonathan, either by email at pastor@cbcsedalia.org or by call/text at (660)351-5843. We would greatly appreciate it.
Have a wonderful day in the Lord,
Pastor Jonathan

What seem to be the problem, what kind of advice do you need? What accounting system are you moving from?

[Kidney01]

Thanks for your Reply,

We are moving from QuickBooks and are new to PowerChurch Accounting. We originally bought PowerChurch for its Contributions side but have decided that we would no longer pay QB's Payroll or regular service fees; they have just gotten out of control. However, we are finding it difficult to navigate the PowerChurch Accounting system as it comes to how it is integrated with Contributions and the other modules, as well as just getting it all setup. We have found some of the Contributions in the Fund account, however, they are not correct. The Payroll that we have already run is not showing up in the fund account. We have put in the 2023 and 2024 years budgets but that does not seem to matter.
Therefore, we were hoping to have a church that is using the PowerChurch Account who would be willing to give us some pointers and instructions so that we can get our system up and running. We have considered paying for tech support and purchasing the entire Accounting Video series but have not done either yet. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to email me directly at pastor@cbcsedalia.org.

Thanks,
Pastor Jonathan

[NeilZ]

Thanks for your Reply,

We are moving from QuickBooks and are new to PowerChurch Accounting. We originally bought PowerChurch for its Contributions side but have decided that we would no longer pay QB's Payroll or regular service fees; they have just gotten out of control. However, we are finding it difficult to navigate the PowerChurch Accounting system as it comes to how it is integrated with Contributions and the other modules, as well as just getting it all setup. We have found some of the Contributions in the Fund account, however, they are not correct. The Payroll that we have already run is not showing up in the fund account. We have put in the 2023 and 2024 years budgets but that does not seem to matter.
Therefore, we were hoping to have a church that is using the PowerChurch Account who would be willing to give us some pointers and instructions so that we can get our system up and running. We have considered paying for tech support and purchasing the entire Accounting Video series but have not done either yet. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to email me directly at pastor@cbcsedalia.org.

Thanks,
Pastor Jonathan

FWIW ... Contributions is only tied to Funds Accounting through the account numbers, you have to post from Contribution to Fund Accounting. Everything flows TO Fund Accounting. Payroll, Accounts Payable, etc. You post from Contributions to Fund Accounting. You do the same with the payroll and accounts payable, you then POST in Funds Accounting.

Its a TWO step process. Post from the subordinate module, which dumps the transactions in the unposted transaction queue in Funds Accounting. You then POST in Funds Accounting, which updates the Chart of Accounts.

My advice, money spent on the Accounting Training Videos is money well spent. Once purchased, you can always access them. We were in Monett up through Feb of last year. If I was still in Missouri, I'd head up there.

[SFCCTreasurer]

I have a related question...have purchased the desktop version and would like to set things up to start fresh in 2025. I wanted to get a jump on things so January isn't a mess and thought I'd start by setting up the chart of accounts. Problem is, the program is asking for balances, which I'd rather defer so I don't have to mirror two accounting systems until the end of the year. Is it possible to enter everything at zero and then make a journal entry to establish the 1/1 balance sheet?

This has probably been answered elsewhere, but I haven't had much luck employing the search function, so apologies if you've seen this question before. Appreciate any helpful insight...

[NeilZ]

I have a related question...have purchased the desktop version and would like to set things up to start fresh in 2025. I wanted to get a jump on things so January isn't a mess and thought I'd start by setting up the chart of accounts. Problem is, the program is asking for balances, which I'd rather defer so I don't have to mirror two accounting systems until the end of the year. Is it possible to enter everything at zero and then make a journal entry to establish the 1/1 balance sheet?

This has probably been answered elsewhere, but I haven't had much luck employing the search function, so apologies if you've seen this question before. Appreciate any helpful insight...

The good thing is that you can try entering zero as a balance, and it should take it. However, this will cause you more work in January as you'll have to do a lot of manual transactions to properly get those balances, outstanding checks, and so on into the system.

Nothing says that you can't design your CoA ahead of time on a spreadsheet, then use that to setup the program in the first week of 2025. This is a much better use of your current time, and will make it easier in January as you'll have all the end of year bank statements, etc.

Having tried it both ways, setting up the PCPlus for a few different churches, I can say that designing the CoA and Contribution Funds needed ahead of time, then spending a day or two using the Accounting setup is much, much easier as the system does a lot of the work for you.

[SFCCTreasurer]

Neil, thanks for your reply. My concern is having to rapidly learn the system while setting everything up (member/contributors, chart of accounts, tax tables for payroll, employee records, etc.) in a very short timeframe while using the system for payroll, working up deposits, paying bills, etc. all while doing my day job and having a few hours a week to get all of this accomplished. That was my thought process in setting up the chart of accounts, tax tables, employee records, etc. in advance of actually using the system and not having to run concurrent sets of books in December.

Naturally, I don't want to create a mess by setting all this up in advance and then trying to start 1/1 by using a general journal entry to put in the balance sheet without being aware of potential pitfalls here. I'm now leaning toward setting everything up mid-December and operating both on Quickbooks and PowerChurch for the last half of December, without the necessary income and expense detail to do payroll in 2024. Hopefully, the transition is fairly smooth and not complicated by my lack of experience with PowerChurch.

[NeilZ]

Neil, thanks for your reply. My concern is having to rapidly learn the system while setting everything up (member/contributors, chart of accounts, tax tables for payroll, employee records, etc.) in a very short timeframe while using the system for payroll, working up deposits, paying bills, etc. all while doing my day job and having a few hours a week to get all of this accomplished. That was my thought process in setting up the chart of accounts, tax tables, employee records, etc. in advance of actually using the system and not having to run concurrent sets of books in December.

Naturally, I don't want to create a mess by setting all this up in advance and then trying to start 1/1 by using a general journal entry to put in the balance sheet without being aware of potential pitfalls here. I'm now leaning toward setting everything up mid-December and operating both on Quickbooks and PowerChurch for the last half of December, without the necessary income and expense detail to do payroll in 2024. Hopefully, the transition is fairly smooth and not complicated by my lack of experience with PowerChurch.

Do the setup on a day you have some time to do this. You say you only have a few hours a week to get this done. Do you have the time to correct everything that you would have to correct because you missed something by not using the proper Accounting Setup?

There was a person here a few years ago who tried what you are proposing. It took the next 3 weeks of my answering questions and giving advice before it was finally working right.

I would tell the church board that this is not something to take lightly, and tell them that it is time consuming and will cost them some overtime (if you get paid for this). Take a Saturday and do it correctly using the Setup and you won't regret it. I'm going to give you the list of items Powerchurch advises you to have ready, not all of these may pertain to you (if you're not including the value of land, etc)

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Before you begin, you will need the following information (you may need to consult with your accountant or bookkeeper for some of this):

·Your church's present Chart of Accounts.

·The beginning and ending dates of your accounting year. For example: January through December or July through June.

·The accounting month in which you are starting to use PowerChurch Plus - either at the beginning of your accounting year or at some other time. If you are starting at some time other than the beginning of your accounting year, you can choose to enter year-to-date balances for each income and expense account. If you choose to not enter this information, then the Income and Expense reports for your first year will reflect activity only from the point you started to use PowerChurch Plus.

·A list of bank account names and balances - checking, savings, money market, investments, etc.

Note: A single checking account is all that is required. The rest of the accounts and balances in the list below are optional, but the more information you can provide during the Setup Assistant, the better your experience will be from the start!

·The values of any land, buildings, vehicles, and equipment your church owns. You can also enter the depreciation amount for the items in each category, but you will enter this as a single number, rather than individually.

·The values of the equipment and furnishings your church owns, such as computers, sound equipment, desks, chairs, and their depreciation amounts. You can enter these values in lump sums if you wish, but you will enter the depreciation as a single number.

·The values of any other assets your church may own, such as deposits to utility companies.

·The balances due on your current liabilities, for example: taxes payable and insurance withheld. You can enter additional accounts if needed.

·The balances due on any long-term liabilities, such as the mortgage.

·The balances and restrictions on each of your Contribution Funds. (Refer to Contribution Income for more information.)

·If you have not already done so, define the list of Contribution Funds in PowerChurch prior to starting the Accounting Setup Assistant. This will allow it to set up the connections from Contributions to Fund Accounting for you.


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My advise is also to tell the church board to buy the Powerchurch video training available: https://www.powerchurch.com/training/videos/

The ones on Fund Accounting,Accounts Payable, and Payroll are very helpful. Yes, they will cost the church some funds, but they will be available for anyone else in future should they need them.

[SFCCTreasurer]

Neil, appreciate all the helpful advice. I had some time between New year's day and today when my first payroll checks were due and eventually, got the year-end chart of accounts set up along with three funds we use. I was able to journal the bank balance into those three funds, set up payroll, run and print today's payroll checks, and set up a vendor to reimburse mileage, etc.

The thing that absolutely made me crazy was that the program kept crashing, often as soon as I opened it. After hours of trouble-shooting yesterday afternoon, I finally determined that a program running in the background was causing Powerchurch to crash. I used the task manager to shut down several programs I thought were unnecessary at least while using PC and it worked. The program quit crashing and I was able to use it without further issues. I've since gone back and shut off background processes one by one and finally determined that my password manager (Sticky Password) does not play nice with PC. I can predictably crash PC every time simply by launching Sticky Password. Go into task manager and close sticky password and PC functions just fine. That's unfortunate as I use Sticky Password a lot, but at least I have a workaround. The developers of PC should be made aware of this if they already weren't so perhaps they can make peace in an update so the two programs can coexist.

Background: CPA/CFP and have been on Quickbooks for 20+ years. I have a day job running my own investment management firm and do this on a voluntary basis for my church. Got very frustrated with Quickbooks getting very expensive for a small country church, so I sought out alternatives and decided on PC in the fall. Thus far, lots to like, but definitely a learning curve from a long-time QB user. I am in the process of handing over the treasurer duties to someone else, but wanted to get PC running smoothly before I hand it off. I'm stubborn enough to feel like I can figure out most things on my own, but this forum has been invaluable in answering several questions and I'll likely recommend the tutorial program you mentioned for my replacement.

Thanks again for your advice...

[Mt Olivet CoG Clerk]

SFCCTreasurer, since you've figured it out, could you possibly help me? I also work a full-time job and do this on a volunteer basis for our very small church. I am limited right now to evenings after work and Sunday afternoons between church so any time someone can save me in searching for info in forums and videos to complete the setup would be much appreciated. My accounting background is limited to 2 yrs of high school level accounting and what I've learned in the past 5 years of this position in the church. I'm very comfortable with learning new software and even with programming since I took Engineering Systems Technology in college. My hardest hurdle right now is limited time so any help that will speed up the process would be greatly appreciated.