User Support Forum

I understand that on the accounting side offerings going to other nonprofit organizations are liabilities and are called Pass-thru contributions. Do love offerings for revival speakers, and song leaders, and missionary speakers also qualify as Pass-Thru contributions or is it only nonprofit organizations? And if individuals write checks to our church or give cash in an envelope with their name on it, they still get the tax deduction on their statement, right? Because the other organization, or guest would not get any thing but one check from our church and couldn't give them a statement. When I set up the Fund description can I post it to a liability account instead of an income account? I would Debit the checking account and Credit the liability account for the Pass-thru? I guess it doesn't matter what I call the fund (love offering or whatever) as long as I post it to the pass-thru account. Am I right on this?

Mary Anne, Financial Sec.
First Baptist Church, Albion. IL

Mary Anne wrote:I understand that on the accounting side offerings going to other nonprofit organizations are liabilities and are called Pass-thru contributions. Do love offerings for revival speakers, and song leaders, and missionary speakers also qualify as Pass-Thru contributions or is it only nonprofit organizations?

The question here is, if the contribution is going to directly support these speakers or leaders, then (if I remember right) these cannot be counted as tax deductable. What we did at my old church was assign these type of contributions to a Contribution Fund that was numbered outside of the tax deductable contribution range.

For example: Tax deductable funds range from 100 thru 299
Non-deductable funds range from 300 to 399.

In this way you can only include the funds from 100 thru 299 on your contribution statement used for income tax reporting.

And if individuals write checks to our church or give cash in an envelope with their name on it, they still get the tax deduction on their statement, right? Because the other organization, or guest would not get any thing but one check from our church and couldn't give them a statement. When I set up the Fund description can I post it to a liability account instead of an income account? I would Debit the checking account and Credit the liability account for the Pass-thru? I guess it doesn't matter what I call the fund (love offering or whatever) as long as I post it to the pass-thru account. Am I right on this?

Mary Anne, Financial Sec.
First Baptist Church, Albion. IL

Again, whether or not the contribution is deductable depends on the IRS rules for tax-deductability.

As far as 'Pass-thru' contributions, you should be able to find information on how to set these up in the Powerchurch manual, the online help, and in this article:
http://www.powerchurch.com/support/answ ... icle_id=58

Hope this helps.