User Support Forum

Question - can I set up a designation from a contribution fund? Example - I would like to set up a designation from our general fund for play ground equipment.

I do not want to go through the process of setting up a fund for temporary use. Any suggestions?

Designations were meant to be more specific than the overall contribution fund. For example, someone is giving to the memorial fund in memory of someone. Or a person is giving money for a missions trip in support of a particular person. A designation does not change the income account in accounting that money is going to be posted to.

In your example, a person giving to playground equipment is an example of a designated fund, where the general fund is unrestricted. They would definitely need to be accounted for separately.

If it is a short term fund, once you have finished collecting money for that area, you can change the fund to make it inactive, this makes sure you don't post new contributions to this fund and it will remove if from the fund list while you are entering contributions.

Thank you Jeff... is there a way I can move money from a general fund over to this new play ground fund? I am new to this software.

Thanks,
Dwayne

Redwolf2450 wrote:Thank you Jeff... is there a way I can move money from a general fund over to this new play ground fund? I am new to this software.

Thanks,
Dwayne

Dwayne,

I think you're confusing a Contribution Fund which is used in the Contributions module, and a Funds Accounting fund, used in Funds Accounting.

If you're going to have a special project to which your congregation can donate money, you would setup the Funds Accounting fund in the Funds Accounting module to track it.

THEN, in the Contributions Module, you would setup a Contribution Fund which would then point to the Funds Accounting accounts. When you then post Contributions to Funds Accounting, the system would create transactions for Funds Accounting which would credit and debit the proper fund in FA.

What this sounds is that you want to restrict funds being donated so they cannot be used by anything else. You may want to think about a Temporary Restricted Income Account which is setup in Funds Accounting. You would then setup your Contribution fund to point to this account.

The restricted money would show up in the standard asset (checking) account, but would NOT appear as standard, unrestricted income, but separate. When you went to spend money toward the project you would need to RELEASE the funds from the restriction.

Since you're new to the system, you may want to think about taking a few of the online Powerchurch courses offered by Powerchurch. Funds Accounting 101 & 102 will definitely assist you with the Accounting side of the program. And the Contributions course, will explain everything about that module.

You can find out more here: https://www.powerchurch.com/training_classes/