Designated Giving or a Liability?

[cupc]

Our church wants to earmark and make sure that 7% of general giving goes to missions. However, it will be deposited into the general fund weekly and transferred to missions quarterly. What is the best way to keep a record of how much we "owe" to missions? We want this to show on reports so we always know how much in the general fund is "designated" to be paid to missions.

[NeilZ]

Our church wants to earmark and make sure that 7% of general giving goes to missions. However, it will be deposited into the general fund weekly and transferred to missions quarterly. What is the best way to keep a record of how much we "owe" to missions? We want this to show on reports so we always know how much in the general fund is "designated" to be paid to missions.

It may be easier to set up Contributions to always take 7% of weekly tithes and offerings (I'm assuming that's what you call general giving) and move it at Posting Time to a hidden Contribution account which then posts to a separate income account in Funds Accounting. In this way you have a report in Contributions that shows how much was set aside each week/month/quarter; and an income account that shows up in the Income/Expense report.

Here's the explanation from the PCPlus built-in help:

"Automatic transfers at posting time. PowerChurch Plus can reallocate a specified percentage of money given to a different fund into the current fund. The contributors' statements will not be affected. The transfer only appears in the Fund Accounting transaction. Enter the percentage you would like automatically transferred when contributions are posted and the fund number where the money will come from. For example, if you are setting up a new Contribution Fund for Hurricane Relief which will share 10% of Tithes and Offerings, you would enter "The above fund is to receive 10% of contribution fund 100's donations", where fund 100 is the Tithes and Offerings contribution fund."

So if you have your general giving going into Contribution Fund 100, you setup a new fund for Mission Transfer as 2000, and in that setup you enter that 7% of fund 100 will be collected. Since this contribution fund is used as a transfer vehicle, it will not show up on any contribution statement.

You will have to have that Income account setup in Funds Accounting before you setup the Contribution Fund so you can point the 'Mission Transfer' Contribution Fund to that income account.

Do you see how this works ??

[cupc]

My head is spinning. Not following but I'm sure it is me.
Is this the simplest way?
These funds set up by default--100 tithes and offerings, 200 missions, etc. are not referring to different checking accounts necessarily, correct? They can be set up so they both go in the general fund? Then, when a check is written to missions it can decrease the general fund checking and also decrease the amount designated to missions because we've then "paid" out part of that 7%. What would that look like?

[NeilZ]

My head is spinning. Not following but I'm sure it is me.
Is this the simplest way?

Actually, it is fairly automatic. The system does all the calculations for the 7%; when you post, the funds are reflected in the correct income account, you have reports out of Contributions showing how much was moved to Missions each week/month/quarter/year.

Its actually very easy to setup:

1. In Funds Accounting: 1 new income account to track for the income for the mission account, must be done first
2. In Contributions: 1 new Contribution account to received the 7% from tithes. Points to the new income account created in 1.