Fund Balance and Balance Sheet

chrisro · Post by **chrisro** » Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:56 am

We have been manually preparing a balance sheet each year, and I would like to start using the Powerchurch balance sheet report, but when I print it out I get a fund balance that doesn't make sense. I checked the beginning balance for the fund balance account and it is at 458,000 and I don't know where it came from. How do I go about fixing this situation?

chrisro · Post by **chrisro** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:46 pm

I took over from a previous treasurer, and I am looking for a place to start. Any help would be appreciated.

chrisro · Post by **chrisro** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:12 am

The fund balance is supposed to be Fund Balance is equal to Total Assets minus Total Liabilities, but in our case it is way off. How can this happen? I would like to fix it.

Post by **Zaphod** » Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:58 am

It sounds like the previous treasurer left you with a bit of a mess. There were ways of throwing yourself out of balance in older versions of PowerChurch. In v9, it's much more difficult to do that, but it also take a little more to fix it.

You'll need to enter an out of balance transaction to fix it. You're right, the Fund Balance is the Total Assets - Total Liabilities. If you can figure out your Total Assets and Total Liabilities, then you can calculate the difference between what your Fund Balance says, and what it actually is.

To enter an out of balance transaction, you'll need to begin the Reference Number with the letters "OOB" (without the quotes, of course). A reference like "OOB-Balance Fix" would be appropriate. Then, you can enter a single debit (to decrease) or credit (to increase) your Fund Balance.

kdavidson · Post by **kdavidson** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 11:40 pm

Zaphod wrote:To enter an out of balance transaction, you'll need to begin the Reference Number with the letters "OOB" (without the quotes, of course). A reference like "OOB-Balance Fix" would be appropriate. Then, you can enter a single debit (to decrease) or credit (to increase) your Fund Balance.

Is there any place that lists these reference prefixes? I was in a very similar situation to chrisro's, and fortunately I did a search here to see if there was a good solution. The OOB trick was perfect. I didn't see it anywhere in the manual, though. The VOID suffix is similar, but that one is in the manual.

Thanks.

Ken

Post by **Zaphod** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:51 am

That's not in the manual for a reason - it's not something that everyone should just be doing all the time. Normally, it's something we only give out when someone calls us for support for this type of situation.

Post by **Jeff** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:55 am

We don't specifically spell out the process for entering a OOB transaction in the manual because many people don't understand accounting. The fear is people will use it when not appropriate. A lot of people switch to PC+ after using a checkbook program like quicken or MS money and the double entry concept is sometimes hard for them to understand.

The only reference to entering an OOB transaction in the manual is on page 202 step 8 in the v9 manual. It is documented in a similar way in prior versions manuals as well.