User Support Forum

We are new to fund accounting and would like to know if most churches set up only a general fund (unless they have a school) or do most churches set up different funds for different ministries within the church, ie. mens, womens, students, children, etc. We would love your input.

We have church, outreach, school, fellowship, karate, student activity, and designated. Until recently, we also had a youth fund and a preschool fund, but now youth is integrated into the church fund, and our preschool is not in operation this year.

This is one of the great features of Power Church. Each fund acts like a separate bank account, you post income, expenses and it will track the fund balance. We have set up funds for General Operating, Building Fund, Cemetery, Men of the Church, and a fund we use for pass through funds (funds collected through church and then sent to other charities).

It really depends on how many of these funds you want to track separately and maintain a separate fund balance. You do need to set up a chart of accounts for each fund, although they can share account numbers.

There is also a great feature that now allows you to track designated gifts within any fund. This allows you to temporarily restrict gifts to be used for only specified expenses. This also maintains a separate fund balance for each restricted fund. See Tech articles for a good description of using this feature.