The accounts that track your congregation’s debts are called liability accounts. You can generally divide liabilities into short-term and long-term debt.
» Short-Term Liabilities
Short-term liabilities are obligations you plan on paying off in the near future and are normally smaller in size. They can include payroll taxes that have been withheld but not submitted, or offerings received for other organizations that have not been remitted.
» Long-Term Liabilities
Long-term liabilities are obligations that normally take years to pay off. Long-term debts can include things such as mortgages or building addition loans.
The Liabilities View
The Liability accounts view presents all of your liability 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 liability accounts. The Liabilities view also allows you to add, edit and delete accounts as well as see account activity.
- The Liabilities view can be accessed within the Finance Module under the Accounts tab, by clicking on "Liabilities".
- 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 Liability accounts, choose (none).
The Liabilities 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), 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 liability accounts as you see it on the Liabilities view.