Negative beginning balances on activity report
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Negative beginning balances on activity report
When using version 9, as a consequence of the ability to have data for more than one fiscal year at a time available, (if you did not close out the previous fiscal year before you upgraded from previous version to v9), it is possible to get negative starting balances on activity reports if the range of months you specify for the report straddles the beginning of a fiscal year. Example, FY goes from Oct- Sept. You ask for an activity report starting with Aug 2004 and ending Dec 2004. Due to the fact that beginning balances for income or expense start at 0.00 for the beginning of the new fiscal year, Oct 1,2004, in order for that to hold true, the beggining bal for Aug 2004 will be negative by the amount of the sum of Aug + Sept 2004 amounts. Therefore, when totaled up, the result will be that the balance that would appear at Oct 1 will indeed be 0.00, and the amount at dec 2004 is indeed its true value. It just makes a strange looking report to see negative beginning balances. If you just do the range Aug 2004 to Sept 2004, so that there is no crossing fiscal year boundary you do get the monthly positive beginning balance numbers for FY 2004 you expect to see. As soon as you start a report in one fiscal year, and end in the next, it appears that the later Fiscal year becomes the new reference point from which the beginning balance of the range is calculated, in such a manner that the fiscal year can indeed begin with 0.00, and also correct numbers show in ending balances. This may be totally confusing, but I have found to keep from seeing confusing numbers, keep reports ranges within one fiscal year at a time, and it will appear normal.
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Jeff
- Program Development
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- Joined: Fri Sep 05, 2003 11:43 am
- Location: PowerChurch Software
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The original idea was that the ending balance of the account activity report should match the balance shown on the income & expense statement for that month. We have been discussing today what should the balances show when the report is run across a fiscal year and we have come up with a two possible solutions and wanted to get feedback as to what people would expect to see in this situation
The first option would be to calculate the begining balance of the account as of the start month and show that. So in your example the beginning balance of the account would be the sum of the transactions between Oct 2003 and July 2004. The the ending balance would be calculated as the beginning balance + the activity shown on the report. The ending balance would then be the sum all transactions between Oct. 2003 and December 2004. The downfall of this method is the ending balance shown can not be shown on any other reports and is really a combination of multiple years of transactions.
The second option we came up with was for income, expense, and transfer accounts, if the range of selected months crossed a year end, the beginning balance and ending balance lines would be suppressed. The sub-total line for the total change in the account would still be there, but we can't really calculate balances because the period crossed the year.
Please let us know which you would most likely expect the program to do in this case. Or if anyone has any other ideas of how to handle this case where the report is crossing an accounting year.
The first option would be to calculate the begining balance of the account as of the start month and show that. So in your example the beginning balance of the account would be the sum of the transactions between Oct 2003 and July 2004. The the ending balance would be calculated as the beginning balance + the activity shown on the report. The ending balance would then be the sum all transactions between Oct. 2003 and December 2004. The downfall of this method is the ending balance shown can not be shown on any other reports and is really a combination of multiple years of transactions.
The second option we came up with was for income, expense, and transfer accounts, if the range of selected months crossed a year end, the beginning balance and ending balance lines would be suppressed. The sub-total line for the total change in the account would still be there, but we can't really calculate balances because the period crossed the year.
Please let us know which you would most likely expect the program to do in this case. Or if anyone has any other ideas of how to handle this case where the report is crossing an accounting year.
How would it be that if the program detected a requested range that crosses the fiscal year boundary, 2 options would be offered:
1. The option to print a split report in two sections where the first section would just print the data for the part of the range before the fiscal year boundary, and use starting balance for that point in that fiscal year, and ending balance equal to that year end balance, and the second section would print the data for the following fiscal year, with starting balance of 0.00 and the ending balance agree with the income and expense report.
2. The option to suppress starting and ending balances, and just print the total activity for the range just in case all you want to know is the amount of income or expense that had occured during that period and don't care about the starting and ending balances. Would it be complicating things too much to be able to offer a choice like this only in cases where a range encompasses a fiscal year boundary? I can see option 1 might get quite lengthy if a report covering many fund numbers were requested.
1. The option to print a split report in two sections where the first section would just print the data for the part of the range before the fiscal year boundary, and use starting balance for that point in that fiscal year, and ending balance equal to that year end balance, and the second section would print the data for the following fiscal year, with starting balance of 0.00 and the ending balance agree with the income and expense report.
2. The option to suppress starting and ending balances, and just print the total activity for the range just in case all you want to know is the amount of income or expense that had occured during that period and don't care about the starting and ending balances. Would it be complicating things too much to be able to offer a choice like this only in cases where a range encompasses a fiscal year boundary? I can see option 1 might get quite lengthy if a report covering many fund numbers were requested.
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Matt
- Authorized Teaching Consultant
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- Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2003 4:04 pm
- Location: Jacksonville, AL
Jeff,
I think your second option of suppressing the beginning and ending balances when the range of selected months crosses the fiscal year boundary, and just showing a subtotal for the period selected, makes more sense. As the time period stretches, the calculated beginning and ending balances become more and more meaningless for income, expense, and transfer accounts once the fiscal year boundary has been breached. For example, in a couple years PC+ users could conceivably do an account activity inquiry that crossed 3 fiscal year boundaries. How meaningful would beginning and ending balances for income, expense, and transfer accounts be in that sort of inquiry?
I think your second option of suppressing the beginning and ending balances when the range of selected months crosses the fiscal year boundary, and just showing a subtotal for the period selected, makes more sense. As the time period stretches, the calculated beginning and ending balances become more and more meaningless for income, expense, and transfer accounts once the fiscal year boundary has been breached. For example, in a couple years PC+ users could conceivably do an account activity inquiry that crossed 3 fiscal year boundaries. How meaningful would beginning and ending balances for income, expense, and transfer accounts be in that sort of inquiry?
I would be fine with just that second option also, with perhaps an added feature that an informational pop-up would show explaining that the beginning and ending balances will be suppressed due to the requested range crossing fiscal year boundaries, and that this pop-up has a "do not show again" checkbox to turn it off once the user knows the situation and doesn't need to be reminded all the time.