Need Advice on Setting Up Funds

[bachristo]

I'm new to PowerChurch and I'm in the process of setting up the Accounting Funds. My question is this:

Our church has many different ministries (i.e Men's Ministry, 5 Cell Groups, Music Dept. with 4 Choirs, Kitchen Committee, etc.). We have 4 different checking accounts (General Operations account, Building Fund account, Benevolence, Pastors Assistance account).

Should I set up a different fund for each of the minsitries, or should I have a General Fund (with the ministries as sub-categories), a Building Fund, Benevelonce Fund, and a Pastors Assistance Fund?

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

[Zaphod]

The question you have to ask yourself is, do you want to see individual reports for each ministry? Also, do you want a breakdown of income and expense for each ministry? If so, you'll want to set up separate funds. You might want to consult an accountant to help figure out exactly what you need.

[bachristo]

The ministries don't have any income. They basically will be alloted a budget from the monies that are in the General Checking Account.

I want to keep things as simple as possible. Therefore I will not need to be very granular in seeing how the mony is used. For example if the Men's ministry hosted a Men's retreat, we would only need to see in our expenses that the money was used for the Men's Ministry and not specifically the Mens' Ministry Retreat. I hope I am not confusing you.

[Matt]

Based on your posts, I think I would set up 4 funds--one for each of your checking accounts--since it appears that these are the primary categories of income that are coming in to your church. Thus, if the men's retreat will be paid out of the general operations checking account just set up an expense account called "Men's Retreat" in your general operations fund to track this expense. You can also enter a budget for this account based on the allotment received to further control the spending of the money.

[jeffkoke]

I would set up a fund for each checking account.

What we have done is set up fund 01 as our general operating fund/chart of accounts. This way all of the main church operating expenses enter into and are spent out of one fund/checking account.

We have a separate building fund (and checking account) to follow those expenses.

Hope this makes sense.

Jeff

[SBCTrustee]

Hello Everyone,
My church uses a budget system to control costs. We only use three accounting funds (01-General Fund, 02-Building Fund, 03-Rental Property). The church votes on an overall church budget which includes all three funds).

Each department (Children, Bible Training Union,etc) or Auxiliaries (Sunday School, Sr. Choir) submits a detail budget to the Pastor. The Pastor submits an approved budget to the Trustees. The Trustees then enfolds these budgets into the overall church budget mentioned above.

From an accounting standpoint, each department and auxiliary's revenue & expense is tracked by assigning them a sub account number (001- Children's department, 002- BTU, 100-Sunday School, 105- Sr. Choir for example).

The Church Treasurer regularly gives the treasurers from the various departments & auxilaries reports about their revenues & expenditures using the sub account features of PC+ (v.9).

Although, I know that PC+ could handle this using separate funds (01,02,03 etc), I rather strongly believe that true funds should be kept as few as possible from an accounting standpoint.

I tend to be concerned about proper reporting issues, especially as they relate to lay persons reading reports, in respect to full disclosure.

Please understand that I am referring to accounting funds, not accounting catagories.

Tom