User Support Forum

We currently have our accounting set up in a rather cumbersome way. I would like to change this to properly use PowerChurch ability to make the transactions I need to for receiving and using temporarily restricted and pass through donations. Here is how things are currently set up:

When a donation is received, it is debited to our general fund 01-1010-000 and credited to an 02 account for that item, as an example: 02-7674-058 Community Garden.

Then, until the donation is used, it is transferred from the General Fund to a Liability Fund at the bank. The transaction for that is:
Cr. 01-1010-000 General Fund
Dt. 02-7674-058 Community Garden Expense
Cr. 01-2256-058 Community Garden Liability
Dt. 01-1220-000 Liability Fund
Cr. 01-3001-000 Fund Balance
Dt. 01-3002-001 Board Designated (this fund always has a credit balance)

When we want to use the money, the transaction to move it back is:
Cr. 01-1220-000 Liability Fund
Dt. 01-1010-000 General Fund
Cr. 02-7674-058 Community Garden Expense
Dt. 01-2256-058 Community Garden Liability
Cr. 01-3002-001 Board Designated
Dt. 01-3001-000 Fund Balance

Then, when actually writing the check, it would be:
Cr. 01-1010-000 General Fund
Dt. 02-7674-058 Community Garden Expense

Is there any way to change this without having to start over?

Good opportunity here to get some basic ideas out there.

Pass-through contributions are used when you collect money to be given to another non-profit organization. That doesn't seem to be what you are doing here. So, that is not the terminology you would want to use.

Temporarily Restricted contributions are when a donor requests (or a church solicits contributions toward) a particular use, and the money is used up for that purpose. This seems to be what you are trying to accomplish.

There are many discussions on setting up temporarily restricted contributions. I will point you to this one:
http://powerchurch.com/forum/viewtopic. ... ted#p15315

As far as what you have done:

Cr. 01-1010-000 General Fund
Dt. 02-7674-058 Community Garden Expense
This is not right. You should not Cr. one fund and Dt. another fund. (Cr. Fund 01 and Dt. Fund 02) The only good thing about this is that you apparently undo it below, by making the reverse transaction to the same wrong funds.

Cr. 01-2256-058 Community Garden Liability
Dt. 01-1220-000 Liability Fund
01-1220-000 is technically an asset account. (Assets are typically between 1000 and 1999) You have it mis-labeled as a liability account.

Cr. 01-3001-000 Fund Balance
Dt. 01-3002-001 Board Designated (this fund always has a credit balance)
You should not directly manipulate your equity accounts except when creating starting balances or closing out things (or other special-case scenarios). PowerChurch will take care of this automatically when you do the correct transactions.

Look at how temporarily restricted contributions are setup by following the link above. If you have trouble, post another question here. Once you have things set up correctly, there will probably be some correction entries you will need to make to get things where they should be.