Expense Accounts are offset accounts which track how money is spent. In dual entry bookkeeping, as with income accounts, this means that when $50 dollars comes out of the checking account for a water bill, you would also have a $50 entry on your “Utilities” expense account to track where that money went.
These expenses usually include categories such as salaries, materials for church programs, office supplies, postage and utilities.
Similar to income, since expense accounts track the money being spent by the church, you can create budgets for these accounts making it easier to plan spending and projects. For instructions on adding budgets see the article on budgeting.
The Expense View
The Expense accounts view presents all of your expense 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 expense accounts. The Expense view also allows you to add, edit and delete accounts as well as see account activity.
- The Expense view can be accessed within the Finance Module under the Accounts tab, by clicking on "Expense".
- 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 expense accounts, choose (none).
The Expense 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 expense accounts as you see it on the Expense view.