Adjusting Expense Overpayment

We discovered in our audit last week that we had accidentally paid out too much money on a reimbursement check several months ago. We had messed up the sales tax + total.

We've asked the member to return difference in a tithing / offerings envelope, which we will add back to the activities budget.

What I can't figure out is how to adjust the original expense. Is there some process to correcting / adjusting an expenditure? I'll muddle through it this afternoon to see what I can figure out, but if someone has gone through the process, it would be quite helpful.

chris_burnham wrote:What I can't figure out is how to adjust the original expense. Is there some process to correcting / adjusting an expenditure? I'll muddle through it this afternoon to see what I can figure out, but if someone has gone through the process, it would be quite helpful.

You don't adjust the original expense (although it would be good to put a note on the expense documentation explaining the situation). All you need to do is to process the deposit exactly the same way you would process a return of unused funds from an advance: the member creates a regular donation slip and specifies the purpose as "Budget return" and you then deposit it in the correct subcategory of "Budget." Then when you do a detailed budget report for that subcategory, you'll see the original expense, and then the credit for the deposited budget return.

aebrown wrote:

chris_burnham wrote:What I can't figure out is how to adjust the original expense. Is there some process to correcting / adjusting an expenditure? I'll muddle through it this afternoon to see what I can figure out, but if someone has gone through the process, it would be quite helpful.

You don't adjust the original expense (although it would be good to put a note on the expense documentation explaining the situation). All you need to do is to process the deposit exactly the same way you would process a return of unused funds from an advance: the member creates a regular donation slip and specifies the purpose as "Budget return" and you then deposit it in the correct subcategory of "Budget." Then when you do a detailed budget report for that subcategory, you'll see the original expense, and then the credit for the deposited budget return.

If the tax amount in the original expense was incorrect it's possible that it may need to be adjusted so that the church doesn't get reimbursed too much in states like Utah. If that is the case you should find the expense using the View/Edit Expenses menu option and adjust the tax amount so that it is correct while also adjusting the other category to that the total remains the same (the original total). This doesn't actually edit the original expense but does record an adjustment effective the day you make the change. You can't change the total of the original expense.