Removing Negatives From the Balance Sheet

[yaura]

Help! We have some negative amounts on our balance sheet (note: these accounts are all fund balances with their own corresponding income and expense accounts):

[02-3212-212] Pastor's Gift -$1,108.40
[02-3263-263] Youth Camp -$26.13
[02-3271-271] One Time/Special -$338.79
[02-3286-283] Community Giving -$171.02
[02-3284-284] Big Give -$1,592.20

How do we get these negatives off of our balance sheet without them appearing in the reconciliation screen or on the income and expense report?

[NeilZ]

Help! We have some negative amounts on our balance sheet (note: these accounts are all fund balances with their own corresponding income and expense accounts):

[02-3212-212] Pastor's Gift -$1,108.40
[02-3263-263] Youth Camp -$26.13
[02-3271-271] One Time/Special -$338.79
[02-3286-283] Community Giving -$171.02
[02-3284-284] Big Give -$1,592.20

How do we get these negatives off of our balance sheet without them appearing in the reconciliation screen or on the income and expense report?

It looks as though you were releasing funds from these temp restricted accounts, without a corresponding addition to those accounts. The only way I know of fixing this, and only if you're sure that the funds were moved from these fund balance/net assets accounts to the unrestricted net assets account, is to do an Out Of Balance transaction for each one. This is a transaction that should only be used once in a great while. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the times it needs to be done.

I would do a search on the built-in help for OOB, it will give you the lowdown on this.

[yaura]

Help! We have some negative amounts on our balance sheet (note: these accounts are all fund balances with their own corresponding income and expense accounts):

[02-3212-212] Pastor's Gift -$1,108.40
[02-3263-263] Youth Camp -$26.13
[02-3271-271] One Time/Special -$338.79
[02-3286-283] Community Giving -$171.02
[02-3284-284] Big Give -$1,592.20

How do we get these negatives off of our balance sheet without them appearing in the reconciliation screen or on the income and expense report?

It looks as though you were releasing funds from these temp restricted accounts, without a corresponding addition to those accounts. The only way I know of fixing this, and only if you're sure that the funds were moved from these fund balance/net assets accounts to the unrestricted net assets account, is to do an Out Of Balance transaction for each one. This is a transaction that should only be used once in a great while. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the times it needs to be done.

I would do a search on the built-in help for OOB, it will give you the lowdown on this.

These funds weren't moved to an unrestricted, we simply wrote transactions that pulled funds from these accounts and "overdrew" them. Would an OOB still be the way to go, or is it something different?

[NeilZ]

Help! We have some negative amounts on our balance sheet (note: these accounts are all fund balances with their own corresponding income and expense accounts):

[02-3212-212] Pastor's Gift -$1,108.40
[02-3263-263] Youth Camp -$26.13
[02-3271-271] One Time/Special -$338.79
[02-3286-283] Community Giving -$171.02
[02-3284-284] Big Give -$1,592.20

How do we get these negatives off of our balance sheet without them appearing in the reconciliation screen or on the income and expense report?

It looks as though you were releasing funds from these temp restricted accounts, without a corresponding addition to those accounts. The only way I know of fixing this, and only if you're sure that the funds were moved from these fund balance/net assets accounts to the unrestricted net assets account, is to do an Out Of Balance transaction for each one. This is a transaction that should only be used once in a great while. Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the times it needs to be done.

I would do a search on the built-in help for OOB, it will give you the lowdown on this.

These funds weren't moved to an unrestricted, we simply wrote transactions that pulled funds from these accounts and "overdrew" them. Would an OOB still be the way to go, or is it something different?

Ok ... here's a question, how did you pull funds from those accounts. Are they attached to individual asset/checking accounts? Could you show me a transaction that you used when writing the check or moving funds?

Normally, if your fund (02) has a single checking account, you would write the check, and release the funds from those accounts. Of course, you would also have an income account that would reflect the income coming in to those accounts from Contributions. If you were transferring funds from the unrestricted net assets, you would have a debit/credit transaction to reflect that.

Basically what I'm getting at is how did the funds get 'negative'? Are there transactions that reflect that?

[yaura]

There are individual transactions that I could probably pinpoint as being the reason why the balances went negative. With some detective work I could probably comb back through our accounting and reverse/correct those transactions and write new ones that won't cause them to go negative. But some are from 2024, and some of them are actual physical checks that were written. Is it possible to void those checks and then rewrite them with the correct accounting I want? Can I even mess around with transactions from 2024?

An example transaction would be one for the One Time/Special.
02-1111-200 Designated funds in main $1388.79 [Credit]
02-6271-271 One Time/Special Expenses $1388.79 [Debit]

[NeilZ]

There are individual transactions that I could probably pinpoint as being the reason why the balances went negative. With some detective work I could probably comb back through our accounting and reverse/correct those transactions and write new ones that won't cause them to go negative. But some are from 2024, and some of them are actual physical checks that were written. Is it possible to void those checks and then rewrite them with the correct accounting I want? Can I even mess around with transactions from 2024?

An example transaction would be one for the One Time/Special.
02-1111-200 Designated funds in main $1388.79 [Credit]
02-6271-271 One Time/Special Expenses $1388.79 [Debit]

Well, if you didn't close the months, you can easily go back to correct them. With V14, you can go back and reopen months to make such corrections.

I would definitely do a Powerchurch backup of the Accounting files before you start so you have a baseline you can return to.

Frankly, part of the issue is that you're using a checking account that may or may not pull from the temp restricted net assets. But if your corrections fix the issue, great.

However, as I said before, I'm not sure you have those temp restricted funds setup correctly.

[yaura]

Thank you! And you're right, we most likely don't.