User Support Forum

I am trying to set up powerchurch to allow for import of vanco transactions. I am confused about the asset transit account and the expense account.
Do I create another detail asset account somewhere? is there a different asset transit account for 01 and 02 funds?
i have asset accounts for my checking 01-regular 1110-000 and 02-designated 1110-200. Do i create an asset transit account here?
Would it look like 1111-000 and 1111-200? Do I just need one or one for each 01 and 02?

Do I create an expense account in my OTHER expense section like 5257-000 Vanco Transaction Fees
I'm using PowerChurch 11.55

Carol D wrote:I am trying to set up powerchurch to allow for import of vanco transactions. I am confused about the asset transit account and the expense account.
Do I create another detail asset account somewhere? is there a different asset transit account for 01 and 02 funds?
i have asset accounts for my checking 01-regular 1110-000 and 02-designated 1110-200. Do i create an asset transit account here?
Would it look like 1111-000 and 1111-200? Do I just need one or one for each 01 and 02?

Do I create an expense account in my OTHER expense section like 5257-000 Vanco Transaction Fees
I'm using PowerChurch 11.55

When you set this up, did you follow the procedure as listed in this Knowledgebase Article ??

https://www.powerchurch.com/support/444 ... ntegration

Also, the Powerchurch manual has information on setup starting on Page 150. If you don't have access to a printed manual, there is an Adobe Acrobat file in the \Powerchurch\PCPLUS115 folder (pcplus115.pdf) that contains the latest version of the manual.

Based on what you're showing, you have one checking account, but have it used in two separate Accounting Funds. You'll need to use the transit account in both funds. This topic explains it pretty well:

https://www.powerchurch.com/forum/viewt ... =4&t=12578

ok i had looked at both of those links prior to posting my question. I have looked at them again. So let's see if I have this correct.

1. create a new asset account in the 01 fund. This is my transit asset account. It can be numbered whatever fits my numbering structure.
2. follow the steps in the viewtopic link you posted to add this asset account to the 02 fund also.
3. create an expense account in the 01 fund for the transaction fees.
4. use these account numbers in the Vanco dialog box when setting up the import function.

Is that correct?

and this is an ASSET account not an INCOME account?
I know I seem to be having a bit of trouble grasping the entire concept. Thanks for your patience and help.

Carol

Carol D wrote:ok i had looked at both of those links prior to posting my question. I have looked at them again. So let's see if I have this correct.

1. create a new asset account in the 01 fund. This is my transit asset account. It can be numbered whatever fits my numbering structure.

Well, if its an asset account, it should be under 1000 to 1999 series normally.

2. follow the steps in the viewtopic link you posted to add this asset account to the 02 fund also.

Yup .

3. create an expense account in the 01 fund for the transaction fees.

You got it. As the operations fund should be the location for this expense as its part of church operations.

4. use these account numbers in the Vanco dialog box when setting up the import function.

Is that correct?

Exactly !!

and this is an ASSET account not an INCOME account?
I know I seem to be having a bit of trouble grasping the entire concept. Thanks for your patience and help.

Carol

Yes, because these are just accounting for funds coming in, the CONTRIBUTION FUND points to what income bucket they're being credited to. When the final posting transaction happens in Funds Accounting, everything will be placed in the proper locations

I added an asset account in the 01 Fund 1120-100, then I added it to the 02 Fund.
I added an expense account in the 01 Fund.5257-000
Then when entering the expense account in the vanco import dialog box it tells me 'Expense Account is not in Fund.'
I went to chart of accounts set up for the expense account and tried to add to 02 Fund . It defaulted to close to account 02-3110-000 and that account is not found.

What am I missing?

I've been advised by a consultant helping me that I need two asset accounts one for 01 and one forf 02. So I am getting more confused the farther I get into the process.

Thanks for your help.
Carol

Carol D wrote:I added an asset account in the 01 Fund 1120-100, then I added it to the 02 Fund.
I added an expense account in the 01 Fund.5257-000
Then when entering the expense account in the vanco import dialog box it tells me 'Expense Account is not in Fund.'
I went to chart of accounts set up for the expense account and tried to add to 02 Fund . It defaulted to close to account 02-3110-000 and that account is not found.

What am I missing?

I've been advised by a consultant helping me that I need two asset accounts one for 01 and one forf 02. So I am getting more confused the farther I get into the process.

Thanks for your help.
Carol

You're missing an Unrestricted Net Asset account, also known as a Fund Balance account. When you created the 02 fund, did you include a Unrestricted Net Assets account?? That's the default account 3110-000. You probably have it setup for fund 01, but did not include it for fund 02. Simply go to the Maintain Chart of Accounts function and look for the account 3110-000. Click on the button that says Add Acct to Fund and select the 02 fund. Save it and that takes care of that issue.

The fact that you didn't have one setup for the 02 fund makes me need to ask this question. You say that the 02 fund is the 'designated' funds account. Are all the income accounts in this fund, TEMP RESTRICTED INCOME accounts? That is, are they all setup as donor restricted income? If so, how are you issuing funds from the fund? If you're writing checks, what are you writing them against if you don't have any expense accounts setup in fund 02?

Normally an expense account closes to the Unrestricted Net Assets account (3110-000). When you write a check (or create an invoice) you should be using the 02-1110-000 checking account and an 02-5xxx-000 expense account.

When you're using restricted income, you have to RELEASE funds from those accounts, then the system will show the funds released from the restriction and put against the UNrestricted net assets.

Now, if your 02 fund is setup with normal income accounts (not donor restricted) you don't use release accounts, but you still need to have expense accounts (normally 5000 to 7000 series accounts) to show the expense and the Net Assets Account (3110-000) which is tied to those expense accounts.

for all my 02 Funds I have the income, fund balance and expense accounts.
a contribution to the food bank for example goes to 02 food bank income account and I pay it using 02 food bank expense account.

not all income accounts are 02. Most are 01 unrestricted. So those expenses are tied to the 01-3110-000 General Fund FB account.

So i have main general checking account 1110-000 and a designated checking account 1110-200.
I pay general expenses from the 01 checking and I use 01 expense accounts and I pay the designated expenses, like the food bank example from the 02 designated checking account using the associated 02 expense accounts.

so i guess I don't have a umbrella 02 designated FB account because i have the individual FB accounts for Food Bank, Building Fund, Benevolence as examples.

but my expense for the vanco fees would just be an 01 expense, right? So shouldn't it close to the 01-3110-000 general fund FB account?

Carol D wrote:
but my expense for the vanco fees would just be an 01 expense, right? So shouldn't it close to the 01-3110-000 general fund FB account?

I'm thinking that the system expects a fee expense in each fund. I'm going to get a Powerchurch tech to look at this thread.

When setting up the Vanco stuff, it looks through your list of Contribution Funds. Anywhere you are recording income and bank deposits from Contributions will also need the Vanco Expense account. Think about the accounting transaction like this:

01-1110-000 Checking (Debit) $90
01-4110-000 Contribution Income (Credit) $100
01-5510-000 Vanco Expense (Debit) $10

This shows a $100 contribution with $10 in fees taken out, which ends up being a $90 bank deposit. All three entries would need to be in the same accounting fund for it to be a properly balanced transaction. So, PowerChurch looks at each of the Contribution Funds and the accounts that are assigned and enforces that the expense account is used in each of those funds.

[Edit] Just a note to clarify, the above transaction is simplified and doesn't use the transit account, but the same principle applies with the transit account.

Zorak wrote:When setting up the Vanco stuff, it looks through your list of Contribution Funds. Anywhere you are recording income and bank deposits from Contributions will also need the Vanco Expense account. Think about the accounting transaction like this:

01-1110-000 Checking (Debit) $90
01-4110-000 Contribution Income (Credit) $100
01-5510-000 Vanco Expense (Debit) $10

This shows a $100 contribution with $10 in fees taken out, which ends up being a $90 bank deposit. All three entries would need to be in the same accounting fund for it to be a properly balanced transaction. So, PowerChurch looks at each of the Contribution Funds and the accounts that are assigned and enforces that the expense account is used in each of those funds.

[Edit] Just a note to clarify, the above transaction is simplified and doesn't use the transit account, but the same principle applies with the transit account.

Sorry for reviving an old thread, but thought best to piggy-back on this idea vs starting a new thread, as my questions are somewhat similar.
I am a bit new to PC+, and slowly trying to wrap my head around my options.

Our church is new to the online giving approach, and we are at the beginning of the process of using Vanco, before we proceed, I wanted to see if I could get some advice on the best approach we should take.
I have read through a number of threads for online giving / Vanco import, plus the posted workflow KB articles.


Say we have two (2) accounting funds 01 (General) and 02 (missions). (This setup is unfortunately historical in nature going back over 15 years, and changing it is a no-go). Based on the above information, we would need to have a fee expense account present in each accounting fund. No issues there.

My concern is the issue of transit accounts and contributions going to the Fund Accounting module.
Due to our personnel structure and approach to handling finances, the contributions module and fund accounting are separated on non-networked computers. This means that the person handling the contributions simply updates the fund accounting module via file, fund accounting is not auto-updated when posting contributions (the fund accounting imports the contribution transactions once per month).
(I am the one handling the contribution side of things, and unfortunately have no real access to the fund accounting module handled by another person)

If the Vanco import expects to enter specific fee transactions in the fund accounting side, then those transactions would have to be manually entered on the other computer by the other person, correct?
Or, is there something I am missing in my understanding, in which you can avoid the transit account approach,and keep it simplified as described above by Zorak (and perhaps handle the fee entries differently)?

Based on my understanding of the transit account is to ensure that the contribution transaction is easily balanced later on when the deposit actually hits the bank account (as the dates of contributions and deposits will differ), allowing for easier reconciliation (similar to having non-online contributions occurring month-end with deposit dates reflected on the next month). My interpretation is this is really only needed for reconciliation purposes for contributions that occur near the end of the month, as 1 or 2 days difference between contribution / deposit date in the middle of the month may not matter when looking at the month as a whole. Should I assume that the Vanco import adds unposted transactions in the transit account in the fund accounting side to be later reconciled?

To give a specific example, I can envision (in the most complicated configuration) an online donor splitting a credit card donation between the 01 and 02 accounting funds (and the contribution funds associated with those donations are properly mapped to the correct accounting fund numbers), plus the donor paying the offset fee.
(This seems to necessitate an additional contribution fund for income offsetting the fees)

In that situation, and considering for our case the contribution module only updates the fund accounting via file, is there a suitable approach to handling these contributions without having to use transit accounts and also minimizing the manually entered transactions in the fund accounting module regarding the fees ?
Or, is it perhaps better to import Vanco via file, and simply communicate the fee entries as a combined amount?

The ACH based contributions / fees are far simpler to handle, it is the credit/debit card ones that will likely trip us up.

Any thoughts on helping me better understand a good approach would be appreciated.

I'm going to let Zorak answer about the Vanco transactions, as he has a better insight on how that works, as I really have not had to use that function.

However, this kinda caught my eye:

Due to our personnel structure and approach to handling finances, the contributions module and fund accounting are separated on non-networked computers. This means that the person handling the contributions simply updates the fund accounting module via file, fund accounting is not auto-updated when posting contributions (the fund accounting imports the contribution transactions once per month).

I have no idea why you can't have everything setup to use the same database over the network as the built-in Powerchurch permissions would TOTALLY prevent anyone without the proper permission to access the Funds Accounting module, and vice versa. All this is doing is increasing the likelihood of bad or duplicated data in one or the other.

I'm assuming that the Contributions area also has the Membership data maintenance function in your congregation?

NeilZ wrote: I have no idea why you can't have everything setup to use the same database over the network as the built-in Powerchurch permissions would TOTALLY prevent anyone without the proper permission to access the Funds Accounting module, and vice versa. All this is doing is increasing the likelihood of bad or duplicated data in one or the other.

I'm assuming that the Contributions area also has the Membership data maintenance function in your congregation?

Yes...well...I would tend to agree with you there. It would maximize our PC+ use if we were 'networked', and make my life a little easier when it comes to month-end processing. However, I am one cog in a small-ish sized church. The choice was made probably over 15+ yrs ago to keep the two PC+ modules physically separate and to keep the information flow in one-direction (from contributions side to fund accounting). The truth is that the arrangement does allow for flexibility in a person's schedule for each who handles each side of things, at the expense of maximizing software capabilities.
Is it the best approach? I would say probably not, but it works for the time being.

Yes, all the membership data is with the contribution module side.

sgbani wrote:

NeilZ wrote: I have no idea why you can't have everything setup to use the same database over the network as the built-in Powerchurch permissions would TOTALLY prevent anyone without the proper permission to access the Funds Accounting module, and vice versa. All this is doing is increasing the likelihood of bad or duplicated data in one or the other.

I'm assuming that the Contributions area also has the Membership data maintenance function in your congregation?

Yes...well...I would tend to agree with you there. It would maximize our PC+ use if we were 'networked', and make my life a little easier when it comes to month-end processing. However, I am one cog in a small-ish sized church. The choice was made probably over 15+ yrs ago to keep the two PC+ modules physically separate and to keep the information flow in one-direction (from contributions side to fund accounting). The truth is that the arrangement does allow for flexibility in a person's schedule for each who handles each side of things, at the expense of maximizing software capabilities.
Is it the best approach? I would say probably not, but it works for the time being.

Yes, all the membership data is with the contribution module side.

FWIW .. doesn't matter when anyone accesses the database, so the schedule flexibility would still remain. This may be something you'd want to bring up to the church board, as it would save time, and provide a single point for updated and backups. You do Powerchurch backups, right

Absolutely, I do backups every time I work in PC+ (at least when doing things beyond just running reports).

Right now the non-networked computers (laptops) have flexibility on where the work is done. However, I will admit that a majority of the time the work is done on-site, at the church. Having a central server modified to have the PC+ files/installation and then simply access via the network could be a plausible solution (based on my interpretation of the KB articles and other forum threads), but would also mean those involved could not 'take their work home'. However, at the moment, convincing the board and others involved on the finance side to make a perceived large shift may take more time to accomplish (already making enough waves with online giving).
Another option would be to migrate to PC online, allowing access from anywhere.

sgbani wrote:Absolutely, I do backups every time I work in PC+ (at least when doing things beyond just running reports).

Right now the non-networked computers (laptops) have flexibility on where the work is done. However, I will admit that a majority of the time the work is done on-site, at the church. Having a central server modified to have the PC+ files/installation and then simply access via the network could be a plausible solution (based on my interpretation of the KB articles and other forum threads), but would also mean those involved could not 'take their work home'. However, at the moment, convincing the board and others involved on the finance side to make a perceived large shift may take more time to accomplish (already making enough waves with online giving).
Another option would be to migrate to PC online, allowing access from anywhere.

Considering the fact that people do 'take the work home' PC Online is a very viable option, and would alleviate any worries about backups being overwritten, or 'sneaker net' transfers getting corrupted.

I would use the data corruption argument, along with having duplicate databases, etc, as part of any proposal to the board.