In Shepherd's Staff, a book or fund is defined as a collection of accounts that represent the financial framework of an organization. Known exclusively as a Fund in previous versions of Shepherd's Staff, typically, most churches will only have one book or fund, though if your church also helps run another organization, such as a school or a daycare that keeps its finances separate from the church, you may have additional book(s) to help manage the finances of that organization.
Note: You can select if you want to use the term Book or Fund in the Tools/Settings menu of the Finance module. For more details, see our Books and Funds article.
- To access the Books/Funds view, open the Finance module, click on "Accounts" and then click on "Books" or "Funds"
- The books/funds view will display each of your books, with each book getting a row in the grid.
- There are different display options for the books/funds grid, which include the following:
- Current Balances - This view will display each of your books/funds, along with the totals for each account type within each book.
- Current Activity - This view will display each book/fund, showing the net activity (Total increase or decrease) for each account type within the current fiscal year.
- Bank balance less dedicated - This view will show each book/fund, the total balance of all bank accounts within that book/fund, the total balance of all dedicated accounts within that book/fund, and the difference between the bank account total and dedicated account total.
- Budget progress to date - This view will show year-to-date income, expense, dedicated in and dedicated out totals, as well as the year-to-date budgets for each of these account types, and the difference between the year-to-date totals compared to the year-to-date budgets.
- Budget progress for year - This view will show annual income, expense, dedicated in and dedicated out totals, as well as the annual budgets for each of these account types, and the difference between the year-to-date totals compared to the year-to-date budgets.
- If you want to add a new book/fund, click the "Add" button at the bottom of the grid. To make changes to an existing book/fund, click on the book/fund you want to make changes to, and then click "Edit' at the bottom of the grid. If you want to delete a book/fund, you can only do so if that book/fund has no accounts. If this is true, click on the book/fund that you want to delete and then click the "Delete" button at the bottom of the grid.