Budget Differences on Income and Expense Statement

[Markbeley]

On the income statement, the YTD budget difference is shown as Actual - Budget for both income and expenses. So if there is less actual income then budget income, you have a credit amount in the difference column. However, if you have less actual expense than budget, you also have a credit amount in the difference column. Some of our parishioners find this counterintuitive.

In other accounting packages, a shortfall of actual income vs budget would be negative, but a shortfall of expense vs budget would be a positive amount.

I am wondering if anyone knows of a way to adjust the income/expense statement so that the budget difference column displays differently for income & expense. I saw the "Budget Report", but that seems to show these amounts in reverse. (So Budget - Actual = difference). Shortfalls of income and expense are shown in the same way in the difference column, which seems confusing to me.

Any suggestions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

[Matt]

I would suggest that you export the Income and Expense Statement to Excel. Then, within Excel you can change the calculation in the difference column to the way you want it to look.

[JohnDMeyers]

I think this will work. I use the Income and Expense Statement as my "Budget Report".

In the Income and Expense Report,
set Column two to "Current Budget"
set Column three to "Current Budget Difference"

and if you want,
set Column four to "Current Budget Percentage"

At the bottom, you can click the check box for "save columns as default".

The "Current Budget Difference" is shown as Actual - Budget.

[tborgal]

John,

How do you get around the crazy calculation at the end of that report that gives you Excess Income\Expense? I would like to use this for my budget report as well but that last line is very confusing not only to me, but I am sure to everyone I distribute it to. For example I get a calculation for current period of (3,869.51) in column one and current budget of (390.93) in column two. Column three is Current Budget Percentage which calculates to 989.82%. Is there a way to suppress that calculation?

[JohnDMeyers]

Tom:

You reminded me of something I do so frequently, I forgot to mention it.

I always run my report from January to December.

That way, I am always comparing my YTD actuals against the yearly budget. We then figure out the percentage of weeks divided by 52 (on June 9th, 23 weeks had gone by = 44% of the year has gone by). And we see how close to 44% we are on some line items that occur monthly, like salaries, etc.

We still get some line items that have 1200% used up. (If we had a $50 budget and $600 was spent).

The other thing that I did this year was I created a budget for every line item, either by the line, or by the group, and even if I have no idea what dollar amount to budget. I have a big group of Guest Ministry, where I have no idea how much we will take in for ad hoc offerings for our Guest Ministers, but it doesn't matter because I have one big amount for a Group Budget, and I budget them all "by the Group" for both Guest Ministry Income and Guest Ministry Expense. The net result on the budget is zero because I budget them both for $4,000. ($4,000 income and $4,000 expense).

The benefit to that is that I don't have any "unbudgeted income" or "unbudgeted expenses", which I think makes the report look confusing.