Monthly Missions

dtroutman · Post by **dtroutman** » Sun Jan 18, 2009 9:33 pm

Our church designates 12.5% of our weekly offerings to go to various defined missions. At the end of the month I write a check to the various missions. I would like to know if there is a way to automatically allocate or transfer the appropriate % for each mission into a restircted account, without impacting our total weekly offerings.

I attempted to use the 'Automatic Transfers at Posting' feature when setting up the contribution fund. I setup the various missions as their own contribution fund and indicated the appropriate percentage for each. This works great, applying the amount to its own resticted account. At the end of the month I can run a report to see the amount in the restricted account, release from restriction, and it would be set back to zero for the next month. The big problem I have with doing it this way is that the Weekly Offering Total is reduced by these mission amounts, so my Income & Expense reports do not reflect the total offering brought in on a give week, unless I would add general offering and these restricted mission contribution funds. This also throws off the income portion of our budget, which is based on the weekly offerings.

I am trying to eliminate the current process of manually entering each week's offering into an Excel spreadsheet to know the appropriate check amounts for each mission. There has to be a better way to do this within Powerchurch.

Any ideas would be great!!

Currently using PC 10.4, program date 10/27/08.

Post by **Zorak** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:26 am

If you have the income accounts for Unrestricted and Temporarily Restricted Contributions Income setup properly, you should get a subtotal line for "Contributions", which would give you the total.

If the program would report the total tithes income as well as the amount shared to missions, you would get duplicate amounts and overstate your income for the period.

If the program didn't report the missions income at all, then the money would not be sitting in the restriction for missions.

Contribution reports will show the actual amounts that were given to each fund. The % transfer doesn't happen until you post them into Fund Accounting.

dtroutman · Post by **dtroutman** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:33 pm

I guess what I was looking for was a feature that would allow you to specify a percentage of a contribution fund to be restricted only, not actually transferred. Then the offering income would be accurate, and I would still have my restricted amounts.

I could restrict the money now on a monthly basis, but I would have to still use my Excel spreadsheet to let me know the dollar amount (based on percentage of offering) to restrict.

Could this be added to the wish list? I would think that many would find this useful? I would think that this option would simply reduce the unrestricted amount and increase the restricted amount. Maybe I still am not thinking about it correctly. I am not in front of PC at the moment, or I would play around with my options and reporting.

NeilZ · Post by **NeilZ** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:37 pm

dtroutman wrote:I guess what I was looking for was a feature that would allow you to specify a percentage of a contribution fund to be restricted only, not actually transferred. Then the offering income would be accurate, and I would still have my restricted amounts.

I could restrict the money now on a monthly basis, but I would have to still use my Excel spreadsheet to let me know the dollar amount (based on percentage of offering) to restrict.

Could this be added to the wish list? I would think that many would find this useful? I would think that this option would simply reduce the unrestricted amount and increase the restricted amount. Maybe I still am not thinking about it correctly. I am not in front of PC at the moment, or I would play around with my options and reporting.

Isn't there a feature during Contribution fund setup to set aside certain percentage to another Contribution fund. That contribution fund could be setup to post to restricted Funds Accounting funds.

Remember, Contribution Funds track only incoming contributions. When you post, you post transactions to Funds Accounting, that's where the restrictions come in for distribution.

dtroutman · Post by **dtroutman** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:20 pm

I have everything setup in the Contribution module correctly. I have defined the mission funds that will hold the 12.5%. It is all working great, when it posts to Fund Accounting it is all being restricted as it should.

The only problem I was having was the reporting and budget aspect. However, I have made several changes to the chart of accounts and I think it will be more clear on the report now. It is not quite as nice as I would like it, but I think it will work. I now have the unrestricted offerings and restricted missions, all under the same group called Offering Budgeted. I have assigned the budget to the group Offering Budgeted and at the bottom of that group the subtotal shows what I need.

I think this will work. If they don't like it, I will keep trying until I get something they like.