Void Week Contribution

[NeilZ]

Why are there so many reversals of contributions?? An auditor would have raised eyebrows over this!

Because I reentered them prior to you saying not to.

Oh my ... I'm having a very hard time trying to figure out this problem with all the other issues I'm seeing.

Quick question .. would you be willing to use this bank statement as the starting point, print a current check register and chart of accounts from Powerchurch, and restart accounting??

I'll understand if you really don't, but the alternative is to just accept the difference with between the bank statement and Powerchurch, then see what happens after the May bank statement arrives and reconciled.

[ngaham]

Why are there so many reversals of contributions?? An auditor would have raised eyebrows over this!

Because I reentered them prior to you saying not to.

Oh my ... I'm having a very hard time trying to figure out this problem with all the other issues I'm seeing.

Quick question .. would you be willing to use this bank statement as the starting point, print a current check register and chart of accounts from Powerchurch, and restart accounting??


I'll understand if you really don't, but the alternative is to just accept the difference with between the bank statement and Powerchurch, then see what happens after the May bank statement arrives and reconciled.

So I would have to re-enter all of the account, checks, and everything?

[NeilZ]

Actually, since you're going to be starting from this bank statement's bank balance, you'd only have to enter the checks, debit card purchases in the uncleared checks, and any deposits that have not cleared. This is why you would print out the check register from the current setup, so you can then go through it against the bank statement and line out any that have already cleared as of the date of the bank statement.

Then you can recreate the accounts from the Chart of Accounts printout. Once the Funds Accounting assistant is done, you would then add the other Fund Accounts, and add existing accounts to them, as well as accounts unique to those funds.

This would also allow you to reduce the number of transfer accounts to one in and one out per fund (much easier to use).

I suspect the reason Powerchurch is showing more than the bank is because that, while you may have verified everything in the paper check register, I suspect some items were either forgotten or during a transfer doubled.

That said, if you want to wait until next month and try to reconcile then it may be worth a shot. Sometimes things show up on the bank statement the next month, that cause the reconciliation to come out correct.

[ngaham]

I honestly don't think the Pastor will be ok with that given recent events at our church. If I did go that route, I would have to start over from the 3/31/17 statement, which is basically what we just did.

[ngaham]

Let's say I wait until next month and it still does t reconsile, then what?

[NeilZ]

Let's say I wait until next month and it still does t reconsile, then what?

Then I think we'd have to look at a restart because there's something there that is not correct. What puzzles me is that the trial balance comes out correct, which means that everything that was entered balances, but since the reconciliation is not, something is missing, and frankly I can't see where it is.

I did find four items that do not appear to have been entered:


Payments Brands - 04/12 - 1079.18
Payments Brands - 04/19 - 54.73
Return Groupon - 04/24 - 138.00
Payments Brands - 04/26 - 410.46

Total: 1682.37


But that still leaves about 3300 to 3500 not accounted for.

[ngaham]

Those were actually entered, minus the Groupon. Those are from the EasyTithe. However, I was told to give the member credit for their entire gift, including the 3% they give to cover the transaction cost. What ends up happening is that deposit from EasyTithe (PaymentBrands) doesn't match the contributions because EasyTithe takes out the fees before deposit. The 3% doesn't cover all of the fees.

[ngaham]

I'm getting ready to go to the church now. What I think I'll do is restart everything and re-enter everything for this month. It is only a months worth so it won't take a ton of time, just the rest of the day basically. I just want to re-enter everything and make sure it's all correct.

[ngaham]

If I did that, how would I handle payroll that has been paid?

[NeilZ]

Those were actually entered, minus the Groupon. Those are from the EasyTithe. However, I was told to give the member credit for their entire gift, including the 3% they give to cover the transaction cost. What ends up happening is that deposit from EasyTithe (PaymentBrands) doesn't match the contributions because EasyTithe takes out the fees before deposit. The 3% doesn't cover all of the fees.

This is why Powerchurch recommends using Vanco as the online contributions system, since its fully integrated. The contributor gets the full credit, and the church gets the net contribution with the fees deducted, and the system is updated automatically.

In your case you give the Contributor the credit for the full amount In Contributions, then only post the contributions coming in through Easytithe IN CONTRIBUTIONS. You don't post them to funds accounting. Since Easytithe does a EFT deposit in your account, that's the only amount you're really concerned about, along with the fees they charge and take out. You need to show that expense, along with that income.

The obvious transaction would look like this based on 1000 contributions and 80 in fees

Income CR 1000
Fees DB 80
Checking DB 920

I suspect if you get a report from EasyTithe, you will see something like that spelled out.

[ngaham]

Those were actually entered, minus the Groupon. Those are from the EasyTithe. However, I was told to give the member credit for their entire gift, including the 3% they give to cover the transaction cost. What ends up happening is that deposit from EasyTithe (PaymentBrands) doesn't match the contributions because EasyTithe takes out the fees before deposit. The 3% doesn't cover all of the fees.

This is why Powerchurch recommends using Vanco as the online contributions system, since its fully integrated. The contributor gets the full credit, and the church gets the net contribution with the fees deducted, and the system is updated automatically.

In your case you give the Contributor the credit for the full amount In Contributions, then only post the contributions coming in through Easytithe IN CONTRIBUTIONS. You don't post them to funds accounting. Since Easytithe does a EFT deposit in your account, that's the only amount you're really concerned about, along with the fees they charge and take out. You need to show that expense, along with that income.

The obvious transaction would look like this based on 1000 contributions and 80 in fees

Income CR 1000
Fees DB 80
Checking DB 920

I suspect if you get a report from EasyTithe, you will see something like that spelled out.

So only post these contributions to contributions and not fund accounting. Then, enter a transaction as you stated above, CR the correct income account(s), DB the EasyTithe Fee Expense Acct, then DB the corresponding checking accounts, depending on the fund account it was donated to.

[ngaham]

Neil,
I'm not at the church just yet so I can't look, but check out the transaction that established the beginning balance for the school. It was a negative amount in the accounting fund which resulted in a CR to the 01 bank account. This may be the problem?!

[NeilZ]

I'm getting ready to go to the church now. What I think I'll do is restart everything and re-enter everything for this month. It is only a months worth so it won't take a ton of time, just the rest of the day basically. I just want to re-enter everything and make sure it's all correct.

If I did that, how would I handle payroll that has been paid?

Before you do that ... make sure you know how much is the starting balance supposed to be in each fund (as of the statement closing date) that you want to have setup. Since the Accounting Assistant only sets up the Operating Fund (01) enter the ending bank balance as of 03/31/2017 (I believe that's what you said the last bank statement was). Then using that statement enter any UNCLEARED checks and deposits from that statement.

Once the assistant is finished. Don't do anything else until you create the 5 other funds you use, and transfer the balances to those funds. Remember, you ONLY need to transfer accounts: 9010-00 Transfer to other funds and 9510-transfer in from other funds.

Don't use the other ones you currently have setup, not needed.

Also, don't create restricted funds, since you're segregating money by using Accounting Funds, adding a restriction to a fund that already is restricted to paying expenses within its fund (IE: you don't pay from 05-1110-000 a bill that's an expense from 01-5510-000)

Finally, before you start any transfers, backup the ACCOUNTING files using the Powerchurch backup utility. This way you have a way to back out of what was done if things don't look right.

[NeilZ]

So only post these contributions to contributions and not fund accounting. Then, enter a transaction as you stated above, CR the correct income account(s), DB the EasyTithe Fee Expense Acct, then DB the corresponding checking accounts, depending on the fund account it was donated to.

Basically, yes. Or intercept the Post to Fund Accounting transaction sitting in the Unposted Transactions queue, and edit it to reflect the actual deposit and fees. Frankly, doing the EasyTithe Contributions separate from the Sunday collection is probably easier, as you can enter the EasyTithe and only post to Contributions, then do as I suggested above.

Neil,
I'm not at the church just yet so I can't look, but check out the transaction that established the beginning balance for the school. It was a negative amount in the accounting fund which resulted in a CR to the 01 bank account. This may be the problem?!

Remember, I did say that was not a good idea. It was a negative $7374 .. it could be the cause of some of the issue.

[ngaham]

So only post these contributions to contributions and not fund accounting. Then, enter a transaction as you stated above, CR the correct income account(s), DB the EasyTithe Fee Expense Acct, then DB the corresponding checking accounts, depending on the fund account it was donated to.

Basically, yes. Or intercept the Post to Fund Accounting transaction sitting in the Unposted Transactions queue, and edit it to reflect the actual deposit and fees. Frankly, doing the EasyTithe Contributions separate from the Sunday collection is probably easier, as you can enter the EasyTithe and only post to Contributions, then do as I suggested above.

Neil,
I'm not at the church just yet so I can't look, but check out the transaction that established the beginning balance for the school. It was a negative amount in the accounting fund which resulted in a CR to the 01 bank account. This may be the problem?!

Remember, I did say that was not a good idea. It was a negative $7374 .. it could be the cause of some of the issue.

That's the balance now, but the starting balance was -5000 something.