User Support Forum

When a person writes one check for multiple funds, how can I record that in contributions and get the funds deposited in the correct bank account if we don't have cash to substitute for the check?
Example:
Check amount $200
Tithes= $100
Building Fund= $50
Benevolence= $50

Cash received in the total deposit was $25; all of the remaining deposit was in the form of checks.

I can post the receipts, but can't deposit the funds accurately. Should I deposit the $100 check in the general fund and then make two transfers? ($50 to building fund and $50 to the benevolence account?) The banks charges us for transfers.
Most folks are using checks and do not want to write multiple checks for each fund.

To make sure I am answering your question correctly. It sounds like you have three different checking accounts. One for the general giving, one for building, and a third for benevolence.

What most people do is all deposits are made into one account and they move money to the other accounts. There is less paper work (one deposit slip instead of three.) I don't know about your bank charging you money to move money between accounts. Are these accounts all at the same bank? I am not sure if that is a common practice or not.

Longer term you might consider consolidating this down to one bank account. When we see people having multiple bank accounts this is how they kept the money segregated for different purposes in the past. Need to keep money separate for a different purpose, just open a different bank account.

Using PowerChurch Church it is possible to keep track of all three separate balance using only one checking account. This will solve the problem you are having now and could save you money if you bank is charging you per account.

I certainly second the advice to keep all your money in one bank account. Using the different accounting funds that Power Church allows, you are essentially keeping what looks like separate check registers for each fund. You can run income/expense reports and the funds balance reports shows the amount of money in each fund.

As example, when I started with our church, we had about 6 different bank accounts. Now we have one and that makes the accounting using PC so much easier, while still maintaining separate reporting and balance tracking for each fund. For instance, if you have one check that is a contribution for two funds, you simply record that in contributions and PC generates the accounting entry when you transfer it to accounting to insure it is credited to correct fund. If you go to any type of electronic funds transfer, you will certainly have to do this since those systems will only transfer funds to one bank account.

For anyone considering why use PC over other accounting systems, to my knowledge, PC is the only one I found that allows you to use the separate accounting funds and still maintain all the cash funds in one bank account. When you reconcile the bank account, it shows all the deposits and checks regardless of the funds they are used with.

We had 4 accounts in our church (Church, CE Dept, Missions and Bldg funds). We have combined the accounts into one. To keep track of each account, do we need 4 fund balance accounts set up in PC?

OK, let me make sure I understand your situation. I assume when you say you have combined all your accounts, you mean bank accounts. What I would suggest is to set up 4 separate accounting funds in PC. Now for each one of those accounting funds you will set up a chart of accounts, can use the same numbers in multiple accounts if you want.

For instance, the asset accounts for your bank checking account might look like this:
01-1130-00 Fund 01 Bank Account- Church
02-1130-00 Fund 02 Bank Account - CE Dept
03-1130-00 Fund 03 Bank Account - Missions
04-1130-00 Fund 04 Bank Account - Building Fund

As you see all these accounting funds have the same asset account: 1130 which would be your combined bank account. Now when you set up each of these accounts with the asset, income and expense accounts it will automatically create the fund balance account for each one of your funds. This way you can record income and expenses for each of the accounting funds separate, PC will maintain the fund balance for each account and you can run reports for each account or you can combine them if you want an overall report.

Now when you go to reconcile your banking account, 1130, PC will include all the transactions that have been recorded for this asset account regardless of what accounting fund they came from.

Hope this helps. Once you get the accounting funds set up it really makes it easy to track income and expenses for each one of these areas and you can run a fund balance report to show how much of your bank account cash is allocated to each one of the accounting funds.

Ok...I understand this.

So, we have been using PC since January 1. The account was not set up like this. What needs to be done to correct this? Will funds need to be transferred from different accounts?

Not knowing how your accounts are currently set up, I'm not sure what you would need to do. You can use a transfer account to transfer funds from one accounting fund to another without it being considered income or expense, represents an internal transfer and not new funds either being received or spent. There is a section in the manual on how to set up the transfer accounts to accomplish this.

If you have only been using PC since January of 2015 then you may not have a lot of transactions entered. It might be as easy to just restart accounting, set up the accounts as you want them with separate accounting funds and then reenter all the transactions since Jan, 2015. That way you would have a consistent start to the year. If you do this, you could specify the starting fund balance for each one of your accounts as of Jan 1, 2015 and then using the separate accounting funds from that point forward, PC would correctly maintain the accounting fund balances.

If you are using the contributions module to record your contributions, you would need to make sure that contributions are set to record to the correct accounting fund. Here are a few examples using my account numbers:

Contribution fund 01 is set to use 01-1130-00 for Debit (bank) account and 01-4110-00 for Credit(income) account (General Fund for us)

Contribution fund 32 is set to use 02-1130-00 for Debit and 02-4110-00 for Credit account. (Building Fund for us)

Note that contribution funds and accounting funds are not the same thing. Contribution funds are only used in the contributions module and are linked to accounting by how you set up the Debit and Credit accounts under Setup for Contribution Funds.

For instance, I have about 50 contribution funds but only 6 Accounting Funds.

Hope I haven't confused more than helped. Be glad to answer any other questions.

trose wrote:Ok...I understand this.

So, we have been using PC since January 1. The account was not set up like this. What needs to be done to correct this? Will funds need to be transferred from different accounts?

It may be easier to tell us how your system is setup currently, so then we could give detailed advice.