Budgeting provides a projection of what's to come for your church financially. Budgeting dedicated accounts is something that some churches may choose to do or not, depending about how the money from dedicated accounts is viewed, as some churches see some or all of these accounts as being part of the overall budget projections for a year, while other churches may not.
Budgeting a dedicated account works differently than budgeting an income or expense account, because a dedicated account handles both money coming into and going out of your church. Therefore, both the in and out portions of the dedicated accounts are budgeted. If your church chooses to budget dedicated accounts, this article will guide you through the dedicated account budgeting process.
- To start entering your dedicated 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. With dedicated accounts, you will see the account listed in the grid twice, once for the "In" part of the account and once for the "Out" part of the account. Either line can be selected. 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 dedicated 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 section labelled "XXXX Budget". You'll see a column for both "Total In" and "Total Out". The "Total In" column represents the annual total of how much money you project this dedicated account will bring in. The "Total Out" column represents the annual total of how much money you project will be spent from this dedicated account. A third column, "Net" represents the difference between the In and Out figures in this and the rows below.
- Below that, you'll see three different figures for each column, which are explained below:
- Prior year Budget - The budget for this account in the prior finance year.
- Change from prior year - The difference between the annual budget for the selected year and the prior year.
- Prior year Actual - The amount of money brought in or spent (In the "In" or "Out" columns respectively) in this account in the prior finance year.
- The "Calculation Method" drop list will let you use Shepherd's Staff to project your budget for the selected account. Bear in mind this calculation method will be applied to both the "In" and "Out" parts of the account. There are multiple calculation methods, each outlined below:
- (none) indicates no method chosen - you would enter your in and out budgets manually in the section below.
- Equal monthly amounts - This method will take the amount you filled in each 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 Budget In" and the "XXXX Budget Out" fields. Below these fields, you'll see a "Net" field which will show the difference between the "In" and "Out" budgets.
- 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.
- Below the monthly budget sections, you'll see two additional sections. The first will show a monthly breakout of actuals from your prior year. The top row will show the actuals going into the account, and the second row shows the actuals going out of the account. The third row shows the difference between the actuals going in and coming out of the account. The second section shows a monthly break out budgets from your prior year. The first row shows you monthly budget in for the account, the second row shows the monthly budget out, and the third row shows the difference between what was budgeted in, and what was budgeted out.
- If you want to continue to the next account after saving the budget for this account, check the "Advance on Save" box.
- Click "Save"