Budgeting provides a projection of what's to come for your church financially. When thinking about budgeting expenses, what we're doing is providing a projection of how much money the church will be spending, and in what ways the church will be spending it. The steps below will walk through how to apply a budget to each of your expense accounts.
- To start entering your Expense budgets, open the Finance module, and then click on "Plan/Analyze" tab. From there, make sure the "Budgeting" option on the left side of the window is selected.
- In the window that appears, find the account you want to apply a budget to, click on it to select it, and then click the "Edit" button. Note that the edit button will only appear if you've selected the current, or the upcoming fiscal year. Otherwise, the edit button will be a "View" button instead. You cannot make changes to budgets in closed fiscal years.
- The window that appears is the budgeting window for this account. You can select another expense account from the Accounts drop list, which is sorted alphabetically by default, but if you'd prefer it be sorted by account number, check the "Sort by account number box". You can also change accounts by clicking the up and down arrows to the right of the drop list.
- Next, you'll see the field labeled "Finance Year XX/XX/XXXX - XX/XX/XXXX" (or Yearly Totals). This is where you can fill in the annual budget for an account.
- Below that, you'll see four different figures, which are explained below:
- Change from prior year - This figure shows the difference between the selected year's budget for this account and the budget for the same account for the prior Finance Year.
- Prior year Actual - This figure shows the real amount of money spent through this account in the prior finance year.
- Prior year Budget - This figure shows the annual budget for the prior finance year for this account.
- Actual Less Budget - This figure subtracts the prior year budget from the prior year actual to show if the budget was met, exceeded or fell short.
- The "Calculation Method" drop list will let you use Shepherd's Staff to project your budget for the selected account. There are multiple calculation methods, each outlined below:
- Equal monthly amounts - This method will take the amount you filled in annual budget field, and distribute it equally to each of the 12 months of the finance year. Note that if the annual budget you entered doesn't divide equally by 12, then the budget will be increased by a few pennies so it can be divided equally by 12.
- Base on prior year's actuals - This method will use the monthly actuals from the previous finance year for this account as a starting point for the budgets for each month of the selected year. Then, to the right of the calculation field, you'll notice a percentage field. Here, you can fill in either a positive number (percentage) to increase the budget by that percent or a negative number (percentage) to decrease the budget by that percent. Click "Apply" to apply the percentage you indicated to your monthly budgets.
- Base on prior year's budget - This method will use the monthly budgets from the previous finance year for this account as a starting point for the budgets for each month of the selected year. Then, to the right of the calculation field, you'll notice a percentage field. Here, you can fill in either a positive number (percentage) to increase the budget by that percent or a negative number (percentage) to decrease the budget by that percent. Click "Apply" to apply the percentage you indicated to your monthly budgets.
- Copy prior year's budget - This method will take the budget from each month of the prior finance year and copy them into each month of the selected finance year for the account.
- Copy prior year's actuals - This method will take the actuals from each month of the prior finance year and copy them into each month of the selected finance year for the account.
- Below the calculation method drop list, you'll see each month of the finance year you selected for this account. If you prefer to fill in the budget for each month individually, you can do so in the "XXXX Expense Budget" field under each month. The figures below this field mimic the figures mentioned in step 5, but instead, they are looking at the same month in the prior finance year, instead of the entire prior finance year.
- Next to each month's name, there is a thumbtack icon, click on this to add a note for this particular month's budget for this account.
- If you want to continue to the next account after saving the budget for this account, check the "Advance on Save" box.
- Click "Save"