Accounting Set up

[kimvdh]

We are a new church plant, currently our financials are taken care of by our "mother" church until we have our non for profit status. (our fiscal year is oct 1 - sept 31. ) our own bank account is at 0 untill the status comes in and we can transfer our money out of their account and into ours. we are expecting that to come in by the end of feb.
I am wondering if i can go through the accounting set up now with a 0 balance? or should i wait to do accnt. set up until all is transfered to us ?

I would like to start recording contributions as of Jan 1 so i will have a full detailed report for 2011 calendar year (to be able to issue giving statements) can I do that with out using the accnt. module? once i start the accnt mod. will it'll all mesh?

I hope my questions make sense!
thanks

[NeilZ]

We are a new church plant, currently our financials are taken care of by our "mother" church until we have our non for profit status. (our fiscal year is oct 1 - sept 31. ) our own bank account is at 0 untill the status comes in and we can transfer our money out of their account and into ours. we are expecting that to come in by the end of feb.
I am wondering if i can go through the accounting set up now with a 0 balance? or should i wait to do accnt. set up until all is transfered to us ?

I would like to start recording contributions as of Jan 1 so i will have a full detailed report for 2011 calendar year (to be able to issue giving statements) can I do that with out using the accnt. module? once i start the accnt mod. will it'll all mesh?

I hope my questions make sense!
thanks

While it sounds like a good idea to get ahead of the game and start the accounting now, its not necessary in order to use Contributions.

You can start entering Membership data, assigning envelope numbers (which are needed whether or not you use envelopes). create Contribution Funds, and enter weekly Contributions right now. Just Post the contributions to the contributions module only.

So there's no need to wait to use Contributions. FWIW ... trying to add starting balances after you've started accounting can be a real pain. What you can do is start accounting to figure out what you want to keep from the basic Chart of Accounts that the system creates, and what accounts you may want to delete or add.

Then when the time comes, you can restart accounting, and proceed from there. It will have no affect on Contributions, and then you can start Funds Accounting with the balances from the mother church's accounting system, and not worry about catching up since the previous Contributions should be accounted for in the starting balance.

Hope this helps.

[kimvdh]

so if i start the contributions now and start the accounting in march will the contribution data for jan - march automatically transfer into the accounting as income from contributions and then continue to do so every week as i add the latest contributions?

[NeilZ]

so if i start the contributions now and start the accounting in march will the contribution data for jan - march automatically transfer into the accounting as income from contributions and then continue to do so every week as i add the latest contributions?

Well ... here's the deal.

If you start Contributions now, you can have that congregational giving data in the system and not have to enter it later. That said, you're depositing your current contributions in the 'mother' account. When 'mom' breaks you loose, you're going to have a starting balance in the checking account, as well as any income accounts you may have setup from the Contributions to date. These will be the starting balances you're going to use when you start the Funds Accounting wizard.

In March, you can start posting to Funds Accounting because you'll have control of your own accounts, and will have entered all the beginning balances in Funds Accounting.

If you held off on the Posting of Contributions so that you could post directly to Funds Accounting, you would be doubling what was already in the numbers.

See what I mean ??