Zeroing-Out an Other Account

The bank lost one of our donations. Members who donated by check on that Sunday had to cancel their checks. One of the members was charged a cancelation fee. I called Church HQ and was told that I should reimburse that member for the check cancelation fee from an Other account and then the Church would reimburse us. I've since reimbursed that member from an Other account and the Church has reimbursed us. Now I have a negative balance in that Other account. I tried to do a transfer in MLS, but the only account that I could transfer to was budget. How do I get rid of the negative balance in that Other account?

Hilohi wrote:I've since reimbursed that member from an Other account and the Church has reimbursed us.

Why didn't that bring the amount to zero? I suspect the two transactions didn't "match up". You might want to recategorize the expense or reimbursement so they do match.

Hilohi wrote:I've since reimbursed that member from an Other account and the Church has reimbursed us. Now I have a negative balance in that Other account.

Did you reimburse the member from a subaccount and then the Church reimbursed you at the top level Other account? If so, you would then need to transfer the reimbursement to the subaccount you used to reimburse the member.

Otherwise, do what russellhltn said and see if you can find the mismatch.

That sounds exactly right, Brother Jackson. Funds transferred between units always go to the top level AMFA account. For example, when our wards transfer funds to the stake for YW Camp each year, the funds appear in the top level AMFA stake account, and the stake clerk must transfer those funds into the stake YW Camp account.

Thanks, guys.

I reimbursed the member from an Other account, but the Church reimbursed us by sending the funds to our Budget account.

On the transfer screen in MLS, the account shown on the left side of the screen is the account from which the funds will be withdrawn, while the account shown on the right side of the screen is the account to which the funds will be deposited, correct? If that's correct, I don't think I can do a transfer from our Budget to that particular Other account. I'm pretty sure the only selectable option on the right side of the screen is Budget.

Find the expense used to reimburse the member (in MLS using the Finance > View/Update Expenses menu item) and change the category to the one where CHQ reimbursed you. That will effectively create a transfer but the transfer will be automatically connected to the original expense which creates a better audit trail. It also will avoid the limitation on which categories can involved in a explicit transfer.