Proposed Change to the Accounting Fund Balances Report

[Jeff]

As report elsewhere, a lot of people don't like some of the changes in version 9 to the accounting fund balances report. For a detailed explanation of why these changes where made, take a look at this post:
http://www.powerchurch.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=633

We have been looking at the Accounting Fund Balances report and the new Changes in Equity Report, these two reports are very similar in the information they report. Based on your feedback I am proposing the following change to the Accounting Fund Balances which should make it similar to how it behaved in earlier versions.

It will not show each equity account in each fund. It will just show the total equity of the fund.

The columns on the report will be:

• Fund Number
  Fund Description
  Beginning Balance
  Direct Transactions
  Income
  Expense
  Transfers (if enabled)
  Fund Total

There will be an option to include year-to-date totals. If year to date totals are include, they will be shown below the period totals just like version 8.5 did.

Here is a mock up what the report would show:

Code: Select all

Fund            Beginning   Direct          Income   Expense  Transfer    Total
                Balance     Transactions

01 General Fund  X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX
   Year-to date  X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX

02 Another Fund  X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX
   Year-to date  X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX

03 Third Fund    X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX
   Year-to date  X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX

Total            X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX
   Year-to date  X,.,.,.,.,.,.XX

Tell me what you think. Would this change be more useful than the current Accounting Fund Balances report in version 9?

[tborgal]

This change looks great to me. My vote on this change is yes.
I would have been satisfied with removing the page breaks between funds, but this is much better.

[tborgal]

The page break issue I was talking about in the previous post is in the Change in Equity Report.

[nlehrlich]

As a new user of Power Church, the Version 9 use of Accouting fund balances has been very confusing for me. My Finance committee really like the excess/income line on the balance sheet. It was a way of double checking the income and expenses. How do you explain the new report? I like you suggestion on changing this to read giving the detail of what makes up the Fund Balances report.
Let me know if there will be an MR on improving this report.

[Zaphod]

The new v9 maintenance release (dated 12/2 - released today 12/8 ) includes the changes to this report.

[tborgal]

Just downloaded the new MR and ran this report for my monthly meeting tomorrow. Works great. Your timing was fabulous. Worth saying again. I have never dealt with a software company that is more responsive to the requests of it's users. You guys are great.

Tom B.

[tborgal]

After playing with this report I have found a small issue. In the Year to Date line, the discription is printed "January 2004 - December 2004". The numbers are correct for YTD information but the discription is a little confusing. It does not matter which month your data is up to or what the system date is. In the original proposed layout this was labeled Year to Date. Could this label be changed in a future MR.

[Jeff]

Do you really want this changed? I personally prefer listing the months. For those on fiscal years it reinforces that the period they are looking at. For example if you are on a fiscal year the yeat to date might be September 2004 - August 2005. If I am looking at the report in July 2005 it is very clear what period of time the year to date is covering.

[tborgal]

This would be fine if it reported that way. But the fiscal year, in my case, is January to December. If I print a report for the month of November the the first line of each fund gives the change for that specific month. The YTD line is labeled January 2004 - December 2004 and the results are January 2004 thru November 2004 not December 2004. The numbers are what I would expect, it is the label that is confusing.

[Jeff]

Your right sorry. I just went back and looked at the code. The year to date calculations are reporting from the beginning of the fiscal year through the ending month, but when I put together the title for the "Year to date range" I used the first fiscal month of the year and the last fiscal month of the year. I have changed this to use the "ToMonth" instead of the last fiscal month of the year. The change is already made and will be rolled out in the next MR. Sorry for the confusion.

[tborgal]

Again I say you guy's are great