Budget

Hello from Gold Coast, Australia,

I am the stake finance clerk, newly called and don't understand how the ward clerks receive their quarterly budgets. Does the amount appear in MLS from church headquarters? Or does the budget get sent to the stake and we work out the allocations? Very confused

Talk to the previous stake clerk - finance if he is still available. Otherwise talk to your stake clerk. How things are done in your area may be different than in the U.S. and Canada. Even here there are a couple of ways a stake can handle the allocations to the wards from the quarterly allowance.

The first method used here is through applying a percentage to the quarterly allowance. That can be an across the board percentage for all the five attendance categories from the quarterly report or each attendance category can be assigned an individual percentage. The details of the budget allowance is found in the RKATS site article The Budget Allowance.

The second method is for the stake to retain 100% of each ward's allowance allocation from headquarters and then write checks to each ward/branch.

There have been discussions on these differing methods in other threads in the forum.

In the US the budget gets sent to the stake, who can either setup automatic allocations to the wards, or who can manually send checks out. Your area presidency's office should be able to offer training on how things are supposed to work. The previous finance clerk might also be a good person to ask about how it works in your stake until you can get proper training.

Our ward gets a check quarterly check. My question back though is what does every do with their checks. We have been depositing them directly into our administration budget but the our view budget page does not show the amount deposited. I spoke to SLC and I was told to deposit the amount into the Misc budget and then move the amounts around to the different groups. Does anyone know why the Quarterly deposits aren't used by the stakes? I know that last year SLC deposited a quarterly check into our budget and it showed in the proper place in the budget report but otherwise I'm confused as to why SLC would want us to enter Stake checks into the Misc line.

Any ideas or directions where to go to find an answer?

wdengland wrote:My question back though is what does every do with their checks.

A good place to deposit the check is into the Budget category "Budget Allocations". The deposited amount in that category is available for allocation to other budget categories just as if the funds had been sent directly from headquarters to the ward.

wdengland wrote:Does anyone know why the Quarterly deposits aren't used by the stakes?

That is a preference of your stake president. The stake can assign a 0% allocation amount for the ward (actually 0% for each of the five attendace categories) in the report sent to headquarters. The stake then gets 100% of the ward allowance and then writes a check to the ward for the allocation they want the ward to get. Some stake presidents feel they can better manage the funds that way.

Your stake clerk should be providing instructions reqarding those quarterly allocations checks. If not then ask him. Ours is kind enough to explain the allocation process for each quarter and then supplies instructions on what to do with the check.

Yes I and my Bishop have searched all through the trainings and I spent a few hours searching through the wiki. Our Stake clerk is very new and I have tried to get him up to speed myself. I have forwarded the answers you have so kindly provided to our Stake Financial clerk and maybe he will be able to get some clarification from somewhere. My issue I believe resides in SLC with the new MLS program they initiated a couple of years ago. It would make sense if the Budget report page that shows the greyed out quarterly deposit amounts were accessible but they aren't for me. I actually called SLC and they told me to deposit the quarterly checks in the MIsc area as I mentioned before. When the Stake deposits the checks into the Ward account do the amounts show up in the quarterly deposit area or where does the deposit actually show on your MLS pages.

wdengland wrote:I actually called SLC and they told me to deposit the quarterly checks in the MIsc area as I mentioned before. When the Stake deposits the checks into the Ward account do the amounts show up in the quarterly deposit area or where does the deposit actually show on your MLS pages.

Well, I don't know why SLC would tell you something contrary to the published procedures. To see the published procedures on the RKATS site, go to Local Budget Instructions. Note that item #5 talks about the stake writing a check from the Budget Allocations subcategory in the stake account, and the ward depositing that check in that same subcategory in the ward account.

Depositing a budget allocation check into a different category will have the same effect on the bottom line, but the Budget Report won't give you a clear indication of what came in in terms of allocations and what was spent. Instead, it will look like you had much smaller (or 0) allocations, and that your net spending was quite small.

For example, if you have a $1000 carry-forward, and budget allocations of $8000, and you spend $8200, it will look like your available budget for the year was $1000, of which you spent $200 (the $8200 in expenses less the $8000 in deposits to the Misc category), leaving $800.

On the other hand, if you take my advice and follow the published procedures and deposit in Budget Allocations, then the Budget Report will show that you had a $1000 carryforward, adjustments to your allocations of $8000, for a total available of $9000. Of that you spent $8200, leaving $800. It's a much better reflection of what happened to say that you spent $8200 out of $9000 than to say you spent $200 out of $1000 (even though in both cases you do accurately have a remaining balance of $800).

I don't think SLC told me something contrary but rather an extra step. Our Bishop asked the other Clerk to deposit the check along with the Tithing and enter it into the Administration Budget. The issue is that when the View Budget screen is displayed there is no monies shown in that screen. If you look at the Budget option one line up the money is there but it is in the second column and there are zeros on the first column.
I hope this makes sense.
I'm not sure about the budget allocation that you are speaking of. The only field in the Budget allocation that we can deposit the money into shows in the Misc category. I just know that for sure the way it is being done now is not correct.

wdengland wrote:Our Bishop asked the other Clerk to deposit the check along with the Tithing and enter it into the Administration Budget.

The correct place to put it is in the special subcategory of Budget:Administration called Budget:Administration:Budget Allocations. That's the only place you can deposit funds and have them affect the way the Budget Report shows the allocations.

wdengland wrote:The issue is that when the View Budget screen is displayed there is no monies shown in that screen. If you look at the Budget option one line up the money is there but it is in the second column and there are zeros on the first column.

That sounds like you haven't yet entered your budget amounts for each subcategory. Part of your annual budgeting process should be to say that the Relief Society gets $1500, the Primary gets $1000, the Young Men get $1200, etc., with the total adding up to approximately what you expect to receive during the year for budget allocations. Each auxiliary leader should know what their respective budget amount is.

You are correct. Our Bishop is not willing to use the MLS budget process. I had a long talk with him on Sunday about it but he is not very happy with the MLS program and is hesitant to use it. Is there a way that I can move the money to the proper account now?

wdengland wrote:You are correct. Our Bishop is not willing to use the MLS budget process. I had a long talk with him on Sunday about it but he is not very happy with the MLS program and is hesitant to use it.

It's unfortunate that he doesn't want to use MLS to track budgets. I suppose that's not a particular requirement, as long as he fulfills his handbook responsibility to prepare and operate on a budget, as detailed in the Policy and Principles section of Prepare Stake and Ward Budgets. Even if he is "hesitant" to use MLS, he can't avoid that responsibility.

But if you don't use MLS, it seems like someone will have to do a lot of extra work to let the auxiliaries know how they are doing with their expenses vs. their budget during the year. MLS is the only tool that knows what the actual expenses were. Given that your ward needs to operate on a budget anyway, it seems like a tiny step to actually enter the amounts for each organization in the View/Edit Budget screen. But ultimately it's the bishop's call.

wdengland wrote:Is there a way that I can move the money to the proper account now?

You can certainly go to the deposit that was put in the wrong category, and edit that particular line item to be in the correct category. Making that adjustment will transfer the money to the proper subcategory.

Thank you. I have sent excerpt for our conversation online here as well as the pertinent page from the "LOCAL UNIT BUGET INSTRUCTIONS" you mentioned. I know he wants to do the right thing it just seems harder than in the past the way MLS used to handle the budget allocation for the auxiliaries. Some times it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks so to speak.

Thanks again for your help here.

Bro Don England

Remember, too, that just because the bishop is uncomfortable with MLS and does not wish to use it doesn't mean that you can't use it to keep track of things.