Want to drop zero balance accounts from Balance Sheet

[Carlatchurch]

Our church leadership is requiring that I do not list accounts on the Balance Sheet that have a zero balance. I cannot locate a means to do this. Can it be done, and how? Thanks for any response.

[Matt]

This can be done by changing the report levels on the accounts with zero balances in "Maintain Chart of Accounts". Make these accounts a higher report level than accounts with balances. For example, make accounts with balances level 4 and those without balances level 5. Then, when you go to print the balance sheet change the "Summary Level" in Report Options to 4. The level 5 accounts will not show up on the report.

This can be tricky to get to work right depending on how you have the report levels in your chart of accounts set up. I would advise printing out your chart of accounts before making any changes so that if the changes don't work they way you intend you know how to get them back to the way they were. You will probably need to experiment with this until you get the result you want.

[Carlatchurch]

Thanks, Matt. I'll give it a try.

[Linda Stepanek]

We usually save them in Excel format and then make the adjustments we want to. Usually we run a level 4 report for our councils and then in Excel expand the Fund Balance area to cover all the funds so it is clear on one report what is in each fund.

[Carlatchurch]

Thanks for your reply, Linda. We do use Excel for reports in which we only want to report our operating receipts and expenses without other information. For our use, we did change the reporting levels to eliminate reporting for those accounts we do not want to see on the Balance Sheet as Matt had suggested. This took care of our current need. Our situation is that the system had been originally set up to include all of the different funds in one major grouping of "01", rather than separate groups for each fund as I would have expected. Those funds that have zero balances and that have been discontinued are the ones that we needed to drop from the reports. I didn't want to delete them, because we did have activity on each of them earlier this year. Maybe someday we can change numbering the funds like they should have been and thus eliminate this problem.

[Jeff]

Version 9 is changing some of this. New in version 9 if an account has a zero balance on the balance sheet, it will not be shown. We have also increased the logic regarding group accounts. On the income & expense statement group account were always included even if all the detail accounts below them were zero. Now in version 9, if all the detail accounts are zero, the group account will not print either.

Also in verison 9, you can change an account number even if it has posted transactions. Everywhere that account number is used automatically updates. You can also change fund numbers with the same result.