Assets are items your congregation owns. This can include money, buildings, land, and equipment. There are generally two types of assets: current and fixed.
» Current Assets
Current assets are assets that you can easily spend to support the congregation’s mission. This includes checking and savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and other assets that can be easily converted into cash. Current assets, or bank accounts, are the only accounts that checks and deposits can be created for.
» Fixed Assets
Fixed assets are non-monetary assets. These include things like the church buildings, pews and organs. Fixed assets are normally used directly in support of your congregation’s ministry, and the congregation doesn’t intend to sell them.
Note: Fixed assets are often expensive and congregations may need to borrow money to acquire them. Consequently, adding up all your assets does not supply all the information about your congregation’s financial strength. To get the complete picture, you must subtract what you owe (liabilities) from what you own (assets).
The Assets View
The Asset accounts view presents all of your asset accounts in a grid format, providing information beyond just the name and account number. This view is helpful for getting a detailed overview of your Asset accounts. The Assets view also allows you to add, edit and delete accounts as well as see account activity.
- The Assets view can be accessed within the Finance Module under the Accounts tab, by clicking on "Assets".
- You can search the accounts grid using the standard search conventions in the search view.
- You can select which book's chart of accounts you're viewing in the "Book" drop list.
- The "Filter" field will let you filter to show "Active accounts", "Inactive accounts" or if you want to view all asset accounts, choose (none).
The Assets grid shows columns for each account number, account name, beginning balance (as of the start of the fiscal year), Change (the amount the account balance has changed by so far within the fiscal year), Current (Current balance of the account), Major Group, Minor Group, Inactive? (indicates if an account is marked as inactive), Bank? (indicates if an account has been designated as a bank account), Responsibility (Responsibility Code), Church Body, and Note (indicates whether there is a note on the account).
- To add a new account from this view, click the "Add" button in the bottom left.
- To edit an account, click on the account you'd like to make changes to, and then click "Edit" at the bottom of the grid.
- To delete an account, click on the account you want to get rid of and then click the "Delete" button at the bottom of the grid. Only accounts with no activity or balance can be deleted, however.
- To view the activity on an account, either double click the account you want to view, or click on it and then click the "Activity" button at the bottom of the grid.
- The "Print" button will print out your asset accounts as you see it on the Assets view.