Update Budget allocation

Is there currently a way to update the budget allocation for each auxiliary unit in LCR? I need to adjust the total allocation to accomodate for the rollover from 2018 expense. For example, we budgeted $300 for the EQ but they rolled over an expense of $100 from 2018 into 2019 which overinflates the percentage of 2019 spent since. I can only adjust it in MLS at this time and was wondering if there was a way to do it in LCR to change the allocated budget from $300 to $400 so that their 2019 percentage doesn't go negative on the report.

cchang wrote:I can only adjust it in MLS at this time and was wondering if there was a way to do it in LCR

Not yet, as far as I understand.

No way to do that yet in LCR. Budget categories can go negative as long as the ward budget has an overall positive balance. Your budget categories are for local management only. The stake and the church only care if your ward budget goes negative.

On the other hand, none of your Other:AMFA subcategory balances may ever go negative. You are supposed to collect the funds before you can spend the funds.

drepouille wrote:No way to do that yet in LCR. Budget categories can go negative as long as the ward budget has an overall positive balance. Your budget categories are for local management only. The stake and the church only care if your ward budget goes negative.

On the other hand, none of your Other:AMFA subcategory balances may ever go negative. You are supposed to collect the funds before you can spend the funds.

The overall budget doesn't go negative, it is the auxiliary unit's budget that goes negative. I want to provide a budget update for each auxiliary unit but with the 2018 rollover expense, it looks like the auxiliary unit has already overspent what we allocated for them. For example, we budgeted $300 for 2019 but currently they have already spent $350 (which includes $100 from 2018) that we do not want to account for in the 2019 budget report when they've only actually spent $250 so far for 2019.

lajackson wrote:

cchang wrote:I can only adjust it in MLS at this time and was wondering if there was a way to do it in LCR

Not yet, as far as I understand.

I think this is probably the last remaining item that I still need to log into MLS for only. Is this something that's on the enhancement list to be added to LCR?

cchang wrote:I think this is probably the last remaining item that I still need to log into MLS for only. Is this something that's on the enhancement list to be added to LCR?

I'm sure it is but we don't know the time table.

Instead of upping the budget (which tends to confuse things), what about transferring some funds into their account? I think the "income" will reflect in the budget report so they remain under budget.

russellhltn wrote:Instead of upping the budget (which tends to confuse things), what about transferring some funds into their account? I think the "income" will reflect in the budget report so they remain under budget.

Good point. Assuming you have allocated your ward's entire estimated budget amount to the various budget categories, if you increased the budget for one category, you would have to decrease it for another category. So why not just transfer funds between categories instead of messing with your budget allocations?

As I said before, the bottom line is that the budget amounts you set at the beginning of the year for each budget category are simply for local (ward) management. Nobody outside of your ward cares if one of your budget categories has a negative balance as long as the overall ward budget is greater than zero.

It is possible that when MLS goes away, we may only be able to set budget categories at the beginning of the year. Perhaps those who set the requirements for the budget functions believe that we should only set the budget once per year. A budget that changes throughout the year is not a very good management tool. Just guessing, as I know nothing.

drepouille wrote:It is possible that when MLS goes away, we may only be able to set budget categories at the beginning of the year. Perhaps those who set the requirements for the budget functions believe that we should only set the budget once per year. A budget that changes throughout the year is not a very good management tool. Just guessing, as I know nothing.

The budget tool is wonky in my opinion. If you're trying to use it to show the organizations how much they still have left to spend, then letting it run negative due to a previous year expense is annoying because they may actually still have dollars to spend from this year's budget. If you're trying to use it to track what they say they're actually going to spend and to keep it consistent year to year, then inflating the budget for 'this year' to accommodate the expense from last year becomes problematic because next year you have to remember that last year's budget was inflated due to the previous years late expense. ha. Keep track of that, right?

As an aside, once I ended up making a change after the start of the year to an expense in the previous year in prep for our audit. This caused MLS to set the date of the expense/change to the date I made the change which then made the expense a CURRENT year expense! Ugh. I now have a rule that I must have everything as clean as possible December 31 and try to avoid any changes afterwards or I get to track oddities throughout the following year.

As another post mentioned, I'm not sure how you 'transfer' income from one budget category to another without changing the allocation numbers since the budget isn't really tied to real dollars and the budget categories really aren't 'accounts'. It's simply a map, right? The income IS the allocation, right?

Yes, you can easily transfer funds from one budget category to another budget category without changing the budget allocations you set for each category.

As for "rollover expenses" I had that issue a couple years ago. The YW president had been saving receipts for several months. About December 15th, she sent me a message that she wanted to turn them in before the end of the year. I told her, "No problem. Just bring them to church next Sunday." Big snow storm. Church cancelled. End of year. So all those expenses were not reimbursed to her until January. Now what do I do? Since the unspent ward budget rolled over to the next year, I supposed I could have increased the YW budget allocation by the amount of the rolled-over expenses from the previous year, but I didn't bother with that. The bishopric and the ward council rarely ask about budget funds, and they don't use the budget allocations as a management tool, so I really wasn't worried about it.

chriswoodut wrote:If you're trying to use it to show the organizations how much they still have left to spend, then letting it run negative due to a previous year expense is annoying because they may actually still have dollars to spend from this year's budget. If you're trying to use it to track what they say they're actually going to spend and to keep it consistent year to year, then inflating the budget for 'this year' to accommodate the expense from last year becomes problematic because next year you have to remember that last year's budget was inflated due to the previous years late expense. ha. Keep track of that, right?

What I do is create a Prior Year Expenses category and allocate the roll over budget (or at least part of it) to that category. Then if a late expense comes in I assign it to that category. That keeps this years budget clean.

The only problem is if you want to determine what they spent in prior years. Then you have to look through the next years Prior Year Expenses as well and see if they had any late expenses.

Starting in mid-November, I begin reminding our organization leaders in ward council meetings that expenses turned in after Jan 1 will be charged against their next year's budget. That usually makes sure those who care about it stay on top of it, and those who don't care, well, don't care.

I have run into this issue in the past and found what I think is a suitable accounting method to avoid unnecessarily inflating quorum and auxiliary allocated budgets for these late expenses from the prior year.

When our ward had expenses that would be debited to the following year budget but were expenses from the current year budget I created a budget category for the next year specifically to address this rollover of expenses. I was able to track these late expense reimbursements or debits and address them with the appropriate presidents without having to adjust or confuse the following year budget.

I began addressing expenses that could possibly roll into the next year in mid November by asking presidencies to get all expenses in as soon as possible and to identify those that could possibly arrive too late. Typically I was aware the situation was going to happen and notified the stake clerk to make sure the excess budget funds needed for these late expenses from the current year would be rolled into the next year rather than have the excess funds retained by the stake.

chriswoodut wrote:If you're trying to use it to track what they say they're actually going to spend and to keep it consistent year to year, then inflating the budget for 'this year' to accommodate the expense from last year becomes problematic because next year you have to remember that last year's budget was inflated due to the previous years late expense. ha. Keep track of that, right?

While I'm sure it's a common practice, no where in Handbook 1: 14.7.1 is the prior year's budget any part of the budget making process. Expenses, yes. Budget, no. Still, I'm, loath to increase anyone's "budget" just to accommodate a prior year's expense. Once increased, it's not likely to decrease without some bad feelings. Especially if there's been a change of leadership and the new leaders don't understand the process. They just see money taken away and hear a lot of "blah, blah, blah". That's why I'm suggesting looking for a way to move last year's funds back into those organizations to offset the expense of the late receipts without changing the budget total.

From what I remember, there's two parts: "Budget" (as in planning guidelines) and actual dollars.

russellhltn wrote:While I'm sure it's a common practice, no where in Handbook 1: 14.7.1 is the prior year's budget any part of the budget making process.

We don't officially use the prior years budget for the future year, but it is used as a reference point.

At the start of the year, the budget starts fresh from what is available (rollover from the prior year - anything the stake takes back because the rollover was too high [that has happened] + the expected budget for the new year [actual 1Q plus the other quarters estimated on the same amount]). We have a contingency line under Administration to cover the differences in the actual vs projected quarterly numbers if they go down. We also use this contingency line to cover unexpected or unplanned expenses so the organization budgets are not drastically affected (last year we had an unplanned community Christmas open house that had expenses beyond what we had in the activities budget so we moved funds from Contingency to Activities to cover the expenses). Every penny is accounted for somewhere and I adjust the budget quarterly to keep it 100% assigned as the quarterly amounts are provided (yes, this means I adjust the budget at least 4 times each year if needed, but the difference is added to or taken from the contingency category so variations in the quarterly allotment do not affect the organization budgets).

It would be great if organizations would submit budget requests, but we have never been successful at that in many years as a ward clerk - either they don't submit anything at all or they want 100% of the ward budget for their organization alone. I have found if they get a reasonable percentage if the budget compared to the prior year, they accept it and work within it.

I put it all on a spreadsheet that shows the prior year budget lines, amount spent, and projected new year budget lines (based on the formula above). I send it to the bishop for approval in December. After the bishopric reviews and the bishop approves, I set it up in MLS in January and provide the budgets to the organizations in ward council.

I keep thinking of this idea of transferring money into a budget category rather than changing the dollar amount assigned to a budget category.

So, if you're transferring money to a budget category (e.g. to make up for a previous year expense), where are you transferring from? Assuming you've allocated 100% of your expected funds, you've got to take the funds (or at least the allocation of them) from somewhere.

For me, I don't "transfer money" within the ward budget. I decrease the contingency line and increase the organization budget line by the exact amount that is is needed to cover the expense. For example, if I had a $50 expense from RS for the prior year and the bishop wanted it to not affect the current RS budget, I would increase their budget by $50 and decrease the contingency line by $50 and still record the RS expense in their budget. They still have the same net amount in their budget and the expense is correctly recorded as a RS expense.

As the year progresses, this does wipe out the MLS history of where we started at the beginning of the year, though... I have to go back to my spreadsheet to know that.

Based on what I've read in this thread, there's no need to initiate a transfer from a category with a positive balance to a subcategory with a negative balance as long as the overall ward budget is not negative, correct?
For example, our distribution center charge budget had a $0 budget but funds were used from that budget to pay for some expenses so now it has a ($300) balance. I don't need to initiate a transfer to from another budget category so it no longer shows positive, correct?

dramafreefamily wrote:Based on what I've read in this thread, there's no need to initiate a transfer from a category with a positive balance to a subcategory with a negative balance as long as the overall ward budget is not negative, correct?
For example, our distribution center charge budget had a $0 budget but funds were used from that budget to pay for some expenses so now it has a ($300) balance. I don't need to initiate a transfer to from another budget category so it no longer shows positive, correct?

Correct, the budget tool is simply a representation of your plan. The categories aren't actual accounts that have to be balanced. Depending on how you do your budgeting and tracking, you may want it to be negative so that next year you know to increase a given category going forward.

The local OTHER categories (e.g. camp fundraiser money) are the ones that cannot be negative as those do represent real dollars and not really your plan.

dramafreefamily wrote:Based on what I've read in this thread, there's no need to initiate a transfer from a category with a positive balance to a subcategory with a negative balance as long as the overall ward budget is not negative, correct?
For example, our distribution center charge budget had a $0 budget but funds were used from that budget to pay for some expenses so now it has a ($300) balance. I don't need to initiate a transfer to from another budget category so it no longer shows positive, correct?

No. Individual categories can be negative. What matters is that your total budget isn't negative. The best way to see that is to view the balance for budget on the Overview > Income and Expense Summary page in LCR.

Having said that I find it is usually best edit distribution center changes and change them to another category depending on what organization the materials are for. This usually gives better tracking of expenses. Editing an expense is equivalent to a transfer except that the system automatically keeps track of the original transaction so it's easier to know exactly what happened.

Agreed. We spent a lot of budget money for things we normally don't buy. Each time I bought something from either Staples or the Distribution Center, the IROP charges debited the Distribution Center Charges budget category. I repeatedly change the source of funds for these expenses to the Administration category -- until it went negative. Then I just gave up, and allowed the Distribution Center Charges category to keep going more negative. We still have plenty of money in other categories that will not be spent this year. So the bottom line is that the original budget category allocations are just a planning tool to see how good your initial guesses were. As long as your Budget has a positive balance on the Income and Expense Summary, it's all good. Just don't allow THAT to go negative.

What our past Bishop's have done (new Bishop about a month ago) is to allocate the funds to the Auxiliaries by a percentage of the total budget on a quarter by quarter basis. We seem to have very 'elastic' incoming amounts. In one year the amounts can vary by $500 from one quarter to the other, and looking at history there seems to no rhyme nor reason as to the fluctuations. One total year my be $1000 less than a year previous or a year after. The Auxiliaries are encouraged to keep within the amount they have at the beginning of each quarter because it may be a lot less next quarter. Very tough. Do any of you have the same experience with the variation of moneys coming in?

The Quarterly Budget Allowance reports provide a detailed explanation of how your quarterly budget allocations are calculated. They are based upon your quarterly reports. If your attendance numbers fluctuate significantly among quarters, then the same will happen to your budget allocations. You can also examine those reports to see if your stake is playing games with the allocation percentages.

I guess that one could go back and look at the previous reports, take the numbers and multiply by the dollar amounts that are used as the multipliers and come up with something very close. I have to admit that I had never thought of going through that exercise. It might be interesting to see how many do go through that exercise.

I immediately calculate the quarterly budget allocation after I submit a quarterly report using a spreadsheet that is set up with the capitation amounts, stake percentage pass through, and calculation formulas. The only numbers I need to enter are the attendance numbers and the results are quite accurate. For example, I hit the nail on the head for the second quarter 2020 amount using the fourth quarter 2019 quarterly report attendance figures. Estimating the entire year has been relatively accurate using the changes from year to year in the past to estimate the changes for the year. Small tweaks are necessary when demographics begin to change.

The only issues for this year since the COVID restrictions has been in determining how headquarters is using 2019 attendance data. There must be an adjustment factor being used based on the differences in membership records in the ward from last year to this year. But when I thought I had it figured out the numbers were off by 11% in our favor. However, that has not been important since our budget expenditures have dramatically declined due to program adjustments and very few activities resulting from COVID restrictions. Next year will be interesting to predict without knowing what restrictions are going to be in place.

jdlessley wrote:The only issues for this year since the COVID restrictions has been in determining how headquarters is using 2019 attendance data. There must be an adjustment factor being used based on the differences in membership records in the ward from last year to this year. But when I thought I had it figured out the numbers were off by 11% in our favor. However, that has not been important since our budget expenditures have dramatically declined due to program adjustments and very few activities resulting from COVID restrictions. Next year will be interesting to predict without knowing what restrictions are going to be in place.

The estimation process is pretty intricate. We have a 2½ page "summary" of how it works for area offices to use when questions come up. The model had some significant improvements between Q2 and Q3.

Hello, I'm the stake clerk in the Nairobi Kenya east stake. We just received our LUBA and I'm not sure on how to divide it between the auxiliaries, any help?

Eokech wrote: Mon Oct 09, 2023 2:20 pm Hello, I'm the stake clerk in the Nairobi Kenya east stake. We just received our LUBA and I'm not sure on how to divide it between the auxiliaries, any help?

I would review General Handbook 34.6 to understand how budgets work.

Typically, none of the auxiliaries would receive actual funds, but would have a "spending plan" budget they need to keep with. As the expenses are submitted, make sure to correctly categorize them so they go against the proper budget.

You may also want to review the articles in the Help Center.