Ongoing program supported by fundraising

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jberard16
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:36 pm

Ongoing program supported by fundraising

Post by jberard16 »

I am trying to come up with a way to account for a fundraising program that we run for Samaritans purse Shoe Boxes. We do a lot of fundraising (income) throughout the year and then purchases (expenses) are made for the shoeboxes and there is often a balance left in the "shoe box account" that doesn't really exist because we are currently just using an income and expense account to keep track of all the activity. These two accounts together do not tell me the full picture because, in reality, there was a balance of fundraised money available to them to use from the previous year's fundraisers. I don't really want to open up a separate bank account for them. How do you suggest I account for this?

NeilZ
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Re: Ongoing program supported by fundraising

Post by NeilZ »

jberard16 wrote:I am trying to come up with a way to account for a fundraising program that we run for Samaritans purse Shoe Boxes. We do a lot of fundraising (income) throughout the year and then purchases (expenses) are made for the shoeboxes and there is often a balance left in the "shoe box account" that doesn't really exist because we are currently just using an income and expense account to keep track of all the activity. These two accounts together do not tell me the full picture because, in reality, there was a balance of fundraised money available to them to use from the previous year's fundraisers. I don't really want to open up a separate bank account for them. How do you suggest I account for this?
Are all the contributions coming in for the shoeboxes kept separate for shoebox use only? There are two ways you can handle this:

1. Track the income as a contribution in the contribution module, but put the funds in a LIABILITY account as a 'pass-thru'. You don't need to use an expense account for this, and as long as you include the liability account in the the Cash Management Report you'll have a report of how much is available at any given time. When you purchase you would credit checking and debit the liability account. At the end of the year, your contributors have a statement showing how much they've given, and whatever is not spent in the shoebox liability account is available for the next year. The only problem is that in order to show how much was spent, you'd have to run a funds report in Contributions against that 'shoebox fund' there for the yearly total, then subtract the remaining funds from the liability account to get your expense total.

2. You can do the same thing by creating a donor restricted income account (temp restricted acccount) and a normal expense account. The good thing is that in this case the funds again carry over from one year to another, again your total in the restricted account can be found in the Cash Management Report, and when you purchase you would credit checking and debit an expense just like any other bill. However you would also have to RELEASE the funds from the restricted account, but this way you see how much is being spent in the I&E report.

Does this help ?
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

jberard16
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2018 3:36 pm

Re: Ongoing program supported by fundraising

Post by jberard16 »

The shoebox funds raised are only used for shoeboxes. The previous treasurer only used a very small part of PowerChurch so I'm going to have to do some exploring around the options you gave.

Thanks for your suggestions. It gives me a starting place for sure.

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