Ward Budget Funds

As I understand it, ward budget funds now carryover year to year. Does the ward need to do anything to enable this to occur such as have the funds located in a particular account? Do all funds have to be assigned to a specific line or will "unassigned budget" funds also carry over? My understanding is that all funds will carry over and the ward needs to do nothing however I would just like some confirmation for peace of mind.

Unless you write out a check to transfer the left over funds, they will carry over. However, I believe the budget will go to whatever you've set it. So if the intent is for the various organizations to carry over their funds, you'll have to adjust their budget to reflect the carryover.

Carryover funds do not remain in the categories they were in the previous year. All budget subcategory balances are combined (automatically) when carried over to the next year. The carryover appears on the "Balance Forward" line in the "Allowance" section of the "View/Edit Budget" screen. This line item can then be allocated as desired along with the estimate/actual quarterly allowances in the "Subcategory" section of the "View/Edit Budget" screen for the current year.

Note that a total budget deficit will also carry over and appear as a negative amount on the "Balance Forward" line.

Great. Thank you both for your answers.

Please note that, as I understand it, all budget funds actually remain in a bucket called "budget allocations". Your line items are just that, internal allocations used for tracking, the funds don't actually go into categories. Unit leadership makes allocations based on projected need and available funds (in the budget allocations bucket). Available funds would be what was carried over from last year + what has been given to you by the stake or Salt Lake (allocations to your unit) + projections for future quarters (allocations to your unit).

During the year close-out, internal allocations (auxiliary line items) are zeroed out, essential clearing your auxiliary budgets. All remaining funds stay in your unit’s "budget allocations" bucket.

In our case, leaders have established a local policy of not allowing individual auxiliaries carry over from year to year. This really helps simplify the budgeting process for clerks. Auxiliaries make a new allocation request that gets evaluated, prayed over and approved each year. Auxiliaries that leave unspent (internal allocated) funds in their budget, simply contribute to the unit collective having a bigger pot to allocate next year.

wrigjef wrote:Auxiliaries make a new allocation request that gets evaluated, prayed over and approved each year.

Wrigjef, Do yo have a locally produced form which is used for this process or does the auxiliaries just turn in a requested amount on any old slip of paper?

I looking for something that gets the auxiliary leaders more involved in budget process beyond me plugging in estimates based on prior year expenses and taking it to ward council for comments an approval. I would like to see some activity based budget planning taking place.

Gary_Miller wrote:Do yo have a locally produced form which is used for this process or does the auxiliaries just turn in a requested amount on any old slip of paper?

I looking for something that gets the auxiliary leaders more involved in budget process beyond me plugging in estimates based on prior year expenses and taking it to ward council for comments an approval. I would like to see some activity based budget planning taking place.

In our stake, we do activity-based budgeting, but we allow the auxiliaries and others responsible for budget categories to submit the information however they would like. It's usually only a half-dozen line items per submission, so it's never seemed worth the effort of creating a more formal process.

So the Young Women might submit a request like:

• YW Standards Night: $150
• Training Materials: $50
• YW Camp: $1800
• Laurel Activity: $400

It's relatively simple to generate (note that the YW probably broke down the YW Camp expenses into food, paper goods, activity materials, transportation, publicity, etc., but we don't ask them to submit that level of detail). When the stake presidency is evaluating how all the budget requests add up they have information that helps them make better judgments than if there were simply a "Young Women: $2400" budget request.

Gary_Miller wrote:Wrigjef, Do yo have a locally produced form which is used for this process or does the auxiliaries just turn in a requested amount on any old slip of paper?

I think in our stake a form has been developed and I'll try to locate one and post it but that part is usually handled by someone else so I don't know if I have one. The concept is very much like what aebrown describes. The auxiliaries internally develop a rough activity calendar then list anticipated activities and how much they estimate each would cost. That information is discussed in a stake/ward council meeting then the proposal is either approved or edited and approved. As the financial assistant clerk I ultimately am handed an approved list of allocations. Typically when I enter those allocations, the total falls short of what is allocated to our unit so I allocate the balance to Administrative. I figured out the hard way that if you have unallocated funds, you lose visibility of them and not knowing what you have can cause problems.

wrigjef wrote:Please note that, as I understand it, all budget funds actually remain in a bucket called "budget allocations".

Budget allocations are the line item transfers into the ward budget. The category is the ward budget. So the "bucket" is the the ward budget. Headquarters does not track local unit allocations to budget subcategories. Therefore, when a new year begins only the ward budget balance for the previous year is known by the backend database which sends that balance to the local MLS for inclusion in the new year. The end of year budget balance for a ward appears in MLS in the following year as "Balance Forward".

I knew it! I post something, you respond and make me feel like I have to apologize

jdlessley wrote:Budget allocations are the line item transfers into the ward budget. The category is the ward budget. So the "bucket" is the the ward budget.

OK, OK so budget allocations is the opening of the bucket (the accepted way to get funds in and from where they are withdrawn)

jdlessley wrote: Headquarters does not track local unit allocations to budget subcategories.

I did not mean to imply that they did, if I gave that impression, I'm deeply sorry

jdlessley wrote:Therefore, when a new year begins only the ward budget balance for the previous year is known by the backend database which sends that balance to the local MLS for inclusion in the new year. The end of year budget balance for a ward appears in MLS in the following year as "Balance Forward".

I believe that balance forward is shown on a budget report as being in Budget Allocations. It may also be the total of "budget" but the line item source (from the perspective of one reading the report) is Budget Allocations.

wrigjef wrote:I knew it! I post something, you respond and make me feel like I have to apologize

I am sorry, but that is not what I wanted to happen. Most of the time I just want to ensure we, especially me, do not confuse other readers. The problem with short written communications in these forums is that some of us (read - guys like me) come off too abrasive and domineering. I expect corrections from others when what I say is not clear, correct, or misleading.

wrigjef wrote:I did not mean to imply that they did, if I gave that impression, I'm deeply sorry

Again I was trying to make it clear to others reading and not correcting anything you wrote.

wrigjef wrote:I believe that balance forward is shown on a budget report as being in Budget Allocations. It may also be the total of "budget" but the line item source (from the perspective of one reading the report) is Budget Allocations.

That is correct. All budget funds come from budget allocations, or budget allowance since both terms are used interchangeably in MLS. It just happens that the carryover is a budget allocation from the previous year. (Clarification for other readers.) I just wanted to make sure other readers do not get the impression that the carryover would appear in the "Budget Allocations" subcategory for the current year.

wrigjef wrote:I think in our stake a form has been developed and I'll try to locate one and post it but that part is usually handled by someone else so I don't know if I have one. The concept is very much like what aebrown describes. The auxiliaries internally develop a rough activity calendar then list anticipated activities and how much they estimate each would cost. That information is discussed in a stake/ward council meeting then the proposal is either approved or edited and approved. As the financial assistant clerk I ultimately am handed an approved list of allocations. Typically when I enter those allocations, the total falls short of what is allocated to our unit so I allocate the balance to Administrative. I figured out the hard way that if you have unallocated funds, you lose visibility of them and not knowing what you have can cause problems.

I was able to come up with the form but the option to attach an excel file here escapes me for the moment.

wrigjef wrote:I was able to come up with the form but the option to attach an excel file here escapes me for the moment.

As you are composing your reply, click the "Go Advanced" button. Then scroll down to the Attachments section and click "Manage Attachments."

Gary_Miller wrote:Wrigjef, Do yo have a locally produced form which is used for this process or does the auxiliaries just turn in a requested amount on any old slip of paper?

I looking for something that gets the auxiliary leaders more involved in budget process beyond me plugging in estimates based on prior year expenses and taking it to ward council for comments an approval. I would like to see some activity based budget planning taking place.

Thanks aebrown. Here is the form