19 month year

[andyi]

My church scheduled to transition our financial year from a calendar to a fiscal year starting August, 2006. We are planning on a 19 month transition year but are uncertain of the consequences with PowerChurch. We generally don't use Powerchurch reports for monthly fiscal reporting. I do use the "Export Accounting Data" process in PowerChurch 9 on a monthly basis and am betting that it is limited to 12 months of data.

* Can you give me any heads-up about dealing with this transition period?
* Can PowerChurch deal with a 19 month year, or is it best that we consider it a 7 month transition year?
* What process do you recommend at the end of July, when we make this transition?

I'm sure I'll have more questions of you as I work on this transition more.

Andy Ihlenfeldt
Database Coordinator
North Como Presbyterian Church

[Jeff]

There really is no way to do a 19 or 7 month year as far as PowerChurch is concerned. In version 9 everything is kept as the calendar month and when it needs to, it figures out what the year to date accounting period is.

You are right, the export will only export one accounting year (12 months) of data. Other reports will ask you for a beginning month and ending month and then show the data for those periods. If you cross a fiscal year, the year to date information should not be shown. For example if you ran an income & expense statement that crossed a fiscal year, the year to date columns should not be shown on the report.

In version 9 all you have to is change the setting in accounting setup when your fiscal year begins. This will automatically change all the year to date setting on all the reports. Other than this changing this setting, there is nothing to do in PC+. You might have other issues to worry about like budget amounts and so on, but whatever you enter into PC+ will be kept as the budget for those periods when you change

[bethelowatona]

Jeff,
I know this is an old post but...are you saying that we can't have a 7 month fiscal year?

We have PC+ v.8.5 and we are just switching from calendar to fiscal year. How would I do a fiscal year end? Would we close the remaining months with no activity (0710, 0711, 0712) and then close the period/year (0713) and start the new fiscal year as 0801 (Oct)?

Does a fiscal year affect payroll and contributions since they "run" on a calendar year?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Zorak]

Would we close the remaining months with no activity (0710, 0711, 0712) and then close the period/year (0713) and start the new fiscal year as 0801 (Oct)?

That is exactly what you would need to do for the short year.

Does a fiscal year affect payroll and contributions since they "run" on a calendar year?

No, you will handle payroll and contributions the same as you would on a calendar year.

[bethelowatona]

Thank you for the quick reply even though I'm not getting back to you so quickly. I thought I would get an email notifying me when someone responded, so I didn't check the forum thinking no one had replied yet.

I was really hoping someone would confirm that I was on the right track for what I needed to do, especially since I had no idea what I was going to do if I was wrong.

Thanks again!!