Donor restriction UI

Fund Accounting, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll

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Carl
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Dec 25, 2007 11:56 am
Location: Washington State

Donor restriction UI

Post by Carl »

This is more of a question/suggestion than a problem.
When I set up a donor restriction I set up net assets, release, income, and expense accounts using Maintain List of Donor Restrictions. But when I visit the Associated Accounts tab for the restriction it does not show the expense account. I have to go track that down using other means. Is there some reason that the expense account cannot be shown on the list in the Associated Accounts tab?
It would also be handy if the Contribution fund were found on the Associated Accounts tab.

NeilZ
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Re: Donor restriction UI

Post by NeilZ »

Carl wrote:
Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:59 pm
This is more of a question/suggestion than a problem.
When I set up a donor restriction I set up net assets, release, income, and expense accounts using Maintain List of Donor Restrictions. But when I visit the Associated Accounts tab for the restriction it does not show the expense account. I have to go track that down using other means. Is there some reason that the expense account cannot be shown on the list in the Associated Accounts tab?
It would also be handy if the Contribution fund were found on the Associated Accounts tab.
FWIW ... the donor restriction sets up a unique fund balance (net assets) account within the operations fund (usually). Any funds listed there are separate from the unrestricted net assets. When you release funds from a temp restriction, the system is transferring funds from restricted to the unrestricted net assets (fund balance). The expense account you create (which is optional) actually closes to the unrestricted net assets, so when you write the check, you are writing it using the checking account which closes to the unrestricted net assets. This allows you to create a temp restricted fund that can be used to cover many things under the restriction. Say you have a temp restricted account for Worship where the funds can be used for any Worship related purchase. You can then use expense accounts under the Worship heading, say ""Candles", and also pay for copies of music which is an expense under Administration.

As far as the Contributions Fund, that is really a separate module in the system, and the flow is one way from the Contributions Fund to Fund Accounting. It really is not connected in any way to Accounting, the only access contributions has to accounting is a read access when you are setting up a Contribution Fund. This allows you to look up an income account where the contributions will go. Other than that, Funds Accounting has no idea what a Contribution Fund is.

Does this help ?
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

Zorak
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Re: Donor restriction UI

Post by Zorak »

That screen is pulling the list of associated accounts by the "close to" equity/net assets/fund balance account that is assigned. The expense closes to unrestricted equity, so it doesn't show up in the list.

It's a good suggestion, but would require a major redesign behind the scenes. In the database table that stores the list of donor restrictions, it's just the name, release account, and notes. All the other functional stuff is built off the close to equity account that is assigned to everything.

Carl
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Dec 25, 2007 11:56 am
Location: Washington State

Re: Donor restriction UI

Post by Carl »

Thanks. From a user-experience viewpoint it would be nice but I understand why the underlying technology results in it being the way it is.

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