User Support Forum

Our church is having a Fair Trade Craft and Coffee Sale. We will be selling the craft products for a few weeks. The coffee sales will be ongoing. For the next few months the profits will go towards a building project. After the building project has been completed the profits will go towards some other cause which is yet to be decided.

What would be the best way to account for the Craft and Coffee Sales within Power Church?

Would this situation warrant starting a new accounting fund?

Thank you for your input and ideas.

Some thoughts on whether or not to create a new fund.

If it is just a short-term project with a small amount of money to be raised, it could be accounted for as a single line item income in your general fund.

If the amount raised will outlast the event, or if the fund-raising will be ongoing in one form or another, you may want to keep all the activity in a separate fund, and roll the resulting asset into the general fund at a later time.

Either way, if you advertise that the money is going for a particular thing, and people give money thinking that it is going to a particular thing, you should create a temporary donor restriction on the money raised.