Do Not Balance Warnings

[tborgal]

Since I have started using V9 The following warning comes up quite frequently. "Total debits and credits in each accounting fund do not balance". The transaction is in balance however. I have determined that the problem is due to the checking account being only in the 01 fund. This did not seem to be an issue with previous versions. I inherated a system that was set up with several accounting funds and a checking account only in the 01 fund. In an attempt to resolve this problem I tried to create new accounts in each fund for the checking account. For example the original account is 01-1110. I tried to move money from 01-1110 to 02-1110 to match what was in the fund balance account 02-3001 but when I did this the fund balance went to 0 in the 02 fund - did not change on the 01 fund however. My problem is that the fund balances are correct for each fund, but all the money is in the 01-1110 checking account. So if I do a balance sheet report on the 01 fund the assets are greater than the Total Liabilities and Fund Balance. Is there a way to transfer money from the 01-1110 checking to 02-1110, 03-1110 etc. with out effecting the fund balance account in each fund. Or am I trying to do the impossible here.

[Zaphod]

Transferring money from one accounting fund to another should and will affect the fund balance. The fund balance is calculated as such:

total assets - total liabilities = fund balance

If you move money from the asset in one fund to the asset in another, the fund balance HAS to reflect that. If all your money is in the asset in fund 01, but you have balances in each of your funds, they are not actually correct. What you have to do is create 02-1110, 03-1110, etc and allocate the proper amount to each account. For instance, if you have a total of $1000 in your bank account (major account # 1110), you can divide it up as such:

01-1110 : $300
02-1110 : $400
03-1110 : $250
04-1110 : $50

The 1110 means that it's all the same account at the bank, and your bank reconciliation will work since it combines all funds on major account number. Then, you can use the appropriate asset to offset the expense account in the fund you're using.

The warning you're getting is telling you that you have a transaction that is not in balance within each fund being used. You need to make sure that your debits and credits are equal within each fund. It didn't give you that warning in v8.5, but it was still technically incorrect.

Hopefully, that helps.

[tborgal]

I thought that was the problem. The only issue is that because of the way the accounts were originally set up the fnd balances a currently correct. I need to be able to make the moves you suggest and maintain the current fund balances, or somehow get them back to where they should be after the move. Is this possible? Do I need to make some moves before I try to correct the bank accounts? I've tried several different things with no success. The fund balances get messed up no matter what I try. Again I ask. am I trying to do the impossible?

[Jeff]

If I understand your problem, when the funds were setup, the bank account amount was not added into each fund and all money was in the 01 checking account. When you wrote checks, you credited the 01-1110-000 account and debited an expense account in a different fund (ie 05-5555-000). If this is the case, each accounting fund is out of balance.

Each fund should be in balance by itself. The total of the credit accounts should equal the total for the debit accounts. The quickest way to check this is by using the trial balance report. At the end of each fund there is a line that says debits - credits. If that line is not 0, the fund is out of balance.

If your funds are out of balance, the only way to rebalance them is to make more cross fund transactions to correct the account balances. You will need to determine the correct account balances in each fund and then just create a journal transaction to adjust the current balances.

This could be as simple as crediting the 01 checking account for the amount to move and debiting the other fund checking account. Then again, it could also be much more complicated if all your accounts are out of balance.

Remeber in each accounting fund the assets need to equal the total of the liabilities plus the total of the equity accounts.

[tborgal]

Tried what you suggested with the following results. Ran trial balance and all effected funds were out of balance. Created the needed accounts in each fund and made the transfers. The trial balance report now shows each fund in balance. Problem is that the balance sheet does not. It only shows th 01 fund as being in balance. The transfer reduced the 3001 account " Fund Balance - Beginning " to zero in all of the funds except 01 and that account was not effected at all. Why should this transfer effect the 3001 account in everything but the 01 Fund?

Tried the above process in V8.5 and it worked fine. Fund Balance 3001 was not effected in any of the Funds and the balance sheet came out fine. What is the difference between the 2 versions?

[Jeff]

What is the journal entry you are making to do these transfers?

[tborgal]

I am crediting the 01-1110 bank account and debiting the 02-1110, 03-1110 , etc. accounts. As I said this all works fine in V8.5. When I have finished the above transactions the only account that balances on the Balance Sheet is the 01 account.

[Jeff]

That transaction will not change the fund balance accounts, because only asset accounts were used.

Version 9 did change however how the equity section of the balance sheet is formatted. In version 8.5 the equity section looked like this:

Code: Select all

Fund Balance
   Beginning Fund Balance   1111.11
   Excess Income/Expense    2222.22
                            -------
   TOTAL Fund Balance       3333.33
    

In version 9 because you can now have multiple equity accounts in each fund, we have dropped the excess income/expense line and each equity account just reports the ending balance. So after converting the above data to version 9, the equity section in 9 would look like the following:

Code: Select all

Fund Balance
   Fund Balance             3333.33
                            -------
   TOTAL Fund Balance       3333.33
                            

In version 9, if you want to see the change in the fund balance, you would use either the Fund Balance report or the new Changes in Equity report.

Code: Select all

[tborgal]

My problem is not with the format of the report, it is with the fact that the fund is not in balance when I run the balance sheet. When I completed the transaction to move the money from 01-1110 to all the other accounts the fund balance account 02-3001, 03-3001, etc. was reduced by the amount of the transaction moved int the 02-1110, 03-1110, etc. accounts. The thing that is strange is that the 01-3001 account did not change. So naow when I run a consolidated balance sheet the assets do not equal the liabilities and fund balance. It is off by the amount that I moved to the different funds. The trial balance is in balance however, and shows a balance in the ##-3001 accounts. Why doesn't this amount show up in the balance sheet in fund 02 and above?

[Jeff]

What was the fund balance before the transfer? The transaction you listed should not have changed the fund balance in any fund, because neither the fund balance accounts or any income & expense were not used. We are probably going to need you to call tech support and possibly send in your data for us to review to get to the bottom of this.

[tborgal]

The fund balance was the amount that I transfered. For example in fund 02 the fund balance was $2802.51. I made a transfer of $2802.51 from 01-1110 (credit) to 02-1110 (debit). The 01 fund balance was at $45,264.92 before the transfer. After the transfer the 02 fund balance was $0.00 and the 01 fund balance was $45,264.92. With this result there is no way to balance the accounts. The above numbers are aquired from the balance sheet report. I just looked at the trial balance report and the numbers are different in the 3001 accounts on this report than in the balance sheet report. Also the trial balance is in balance after the above transaction, wierd huh.

I agree with what you are saying about the effect this transaction should have on the fund balance, and as I said before, the exact same transaction works fine in V 8.5, only the 1110 accounts are effected and the balance sheet report is in balance. Have we found a bug in V. 9?

[tborgal]

Hve new information to add to the mix. I just uninstalled and reinstalled V9 and captured the account setup from V8.5 with all the 1110 accounts in each fund created in this version (8.5). I then tried to make a transfer from 02-1110 to 01-1110 in V9 and it worked fine. The transfer did not effect the fund balance in either fund. This explains why the 01 fund was not effected when I made the transfers before.

Conclusion: There must be something strange happening when the accounts are created with V9 since accounts already created in V8.5 prior to importing the data to V9 are not effected.

Any ideas?

[tborgal]

After talking to Tech Support on the phone and having them recreate the problem with my data, it turned out to be a bug which is fixed with the latest V9 maint. release dated 9/24/04.

Thanks for all the help here and a thank you to tech support, and God Bless. Great software and great support.

[stroupesters]

I recently upgraded to version 11 and have received this same error message. I do not have 1110 set up in other funds. I have no idea how to do that. I just started with this program recently in general and it is like no other program I have used, so when I upgraded to v11 and now am receiving this message, I have no idea how to fix it. I read the previous posts, which made sense to some degree, but how do I know how much money to transfer from 01-1110 to the other funds? Do I only make those transfers when I have an expense posting to them? Does that mean a journal entry for each transaction that hits a fund different than 01?

[ASmith11]

I have a big problem. ALL my funds are out of balance. How do I go about correcting this? I came on board here in 2009; the person who trained me said it didn't matter when writing checks if you used Fund 01-1110, 02-1110, or whatever when writing a check as long as the correct expense account was used.

I knew that had to be wrong so I started using the correct 1110 account shortly after I started. I have no idea how far back this problem goes.

Where to begin? How can I figure out where the debits and credits don't match?

thank you!