Fixing the budget allocation numbers

Hey all, I'm a stake finance clerk and have a problem I don't understand if I can fix.

The scenario is that we have a ward that has, now for the second year in a row a budget number that seems to be wrong based on the Balance Forward number that was calculated January 1.

Their current budget is showing 1500 dollars less than it should be, based on the Balance Forward calculation. As I understand it, and I see on the Income and Expense summary page, the only income that is counted in the total Budget are transfers that are either the quarterly allocations or authorized member financed activities. This particular ward for 2022, also had 1800 dollars allocated to them as an Additional Allowance, and 1300 in Allowance Adjustments. For 2022 they ended up spending 1600 of that 3100, which should have given them a net carryover of 1500 in their Balance Forward.

The issue at hand is the church system doesn't account for the Allowance Adjustments or Additional Allowance in the Balance forward calculation, so for their 2023 numbers they are starting with a Balance Forward in the red 1500 dollars.

We can add 1500 as an additional allowance in their budget to fix THIS year, but we'll be in the same boat at the end of this year going to 2024. So my question is, how do we fix this on a permanent basis. They managed their money well, according to their budget, but currently they are being penalized in 2023 numbers because they allegedly started the year in the red....which is wrong.

Any suggestions on how to attack this on the stake side, if there is a way, to try and get the numbers correct?

The Additional Allowance is just a place for the ward to enter an additional amount if they expect to receive budget transfers in addition to the standard quarterly allowance. This is just for planning purposes. It doesn't actually give the ward any additional budget by itself. The stake has to make an actual transfer to the ward from the stake budget in order to actually give them any additional budget. When such a transfer is made, it shows up in the Allowance Adjustments line. To correctly account for this, the ward must then eliminate the Additional Allowance value or the transfer will be double counted and it will look like they have more budget than they do.

So the balance forward will never include the amount in Additional Allowance because it doesn't represent an actual budget allocation.

Now without actually seeing all your budget numbers, I can't say exactly where the negative $1500 comes from. Based on your numbers above I would expect a negative $300 (the 1300 Allowance Adjustments less the 1600 that was spent). But it is fairly unlikely (although not impossible) that the LCR isn't calculating the balance forward correctly.

I appreciate the reply, though I think I either A) Misread something, or B) Completely don't understand something.

Here's the information for 2022. In the Income Expense Summary I see the following (Income Only):
06 JAN 2022 Standard allocation for Q1 2022 Transfer $1,814.31
08 Apr 2022 Standard allocation for Q2 2022 Transfer $2,160.93
07 Jul 2022 Standard allocation for Q3 2022 Transfer $2,197.49
01 Sep 2022 Transfer balances from Authorized Member Financed Activities Transfer ($376.53)
01 Sep 2022 Transfer balances from Authorized Member Financed Activities Transfer $1,737.50
06 Oct 2022 Standard allocation for Q4 2022 Transfer $1,881.26

On the Budget Allocation Page for 2022 I see:
Balance Forward 6510.99
Q1 1814.31
Q2 2160.93
Q3 2197.49
Q4 1881.26
Additional Allowance 1841.13
Allowance Adjustments 1360.97


On the Income Expense Summary I see the following Expenses total: $17,941

So, if I total up the Q1-Q4 allocations and add the Balance Forward I get a number of $16302.48. Neither the additional allowance, nor the allowance adjustments are counted as Income when the finance app is doing the balance forward calculation (as near as I can tell).

The difference between those two numbers is the deficit balance forward I see for 2023. So from the ward's perspective (and mine) they spent their allocated budget for 2022. The finance webapp says they were in the red. So now for 2023, their budget available is something like 5500, instead of the 7000 it should be. The Bishop is trying to figure out how to get this managed so it's not a perpetual cycle.

From what I'm seeing in 2022, even if I assign them more budget as an Allowance Adjustment to offset this deficit, that won't be taken into account when the balance forward is calculated for 2024, because it wasn't accounted for as near as I can tell in 2023.

What am I missing, or not understanding?

Thanks again for the help, these are the esoteric things about the budget and unit money that make this job sometimes incomprehensible for me.

lospugs wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:22 am So, if I total up the Q1-Q4 allocations and add the Balance Forward I get a number of $16302.48.

Based on your numbers that isn't what I come up with (6510.99 + 1814.31 + 2160.93 + 2197.49 + 1881.26 = $14564.98). However, the total budget actually available should include the Allowance Adjustments which would bring the total to $15925.95.

lospugs wrote: Sat Mar 18, 2023 7:22 am On the Income Expense Summary I see the following Expenses total: $17,941

In order to find the correct total budget expenses you need to also include any transfers from categories other than Budget Allocation (for things like camp payments to the stake or transfers to or from AFMA accounts).

An alternative way of getting the total expenses is to go to the Budget screen and find the numbers under Budget Balance. It should say that the balance is ' $x of $y'. Subtract x from y. If that matches then you know you've got the expenses right. If not, then you're not accounting for all of the transfers correctly.

Thanks for the reply, but I think what is missing here is not so much the addition of the numbers.

The numbers I put in my first response were all added up using Excel, taking the information from the Income and Expenses Summary information for the ward in question.

The issue we're having, is that when transitioning from 2022 -> 2023, there is what seems to be a discrepancy in the way the numbers get calculated for the rollover. The additional allowance and allowance adjustments are not used on the church's webapp when calculating the Balance Forward number.

Because those are ignored, the ward numbers are just wrong in terms of what they were expecting, and frankly what we talked about between the ward and the stake for the carryover. I'm assuming it's easy to just give them the money from the stake as an additional allowance, but if that gets spent then we're in the same boat in 2024. Fixing the broken loop is what I'm trying to figure out how to do here and I can't seem to find the right knobs and switches.

lospugs wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 11:21 amThe issue we're having, is that when transitioning from 2022 -> 2023, there is what seems to be a discrepancy in the way the numbers get calculated for the rollover. The additional allowance and allowance adjustments are not used on the church's webapp when calculating the Balance Forward number.

At this point I think you need to contact the global service department for more help. They can access your actual accounts and can hopefully identify the discrepancy either in your expectations or in how your balance was calculated (although it is rather unlikely that it was calculated incorrectly).

But I will emphasize one more time that the 'Additional Allowance' amount will never be used when calculating the balance forward. That line is something that the unit can enter themselves and they can put in any amount they want. It doesn't actually change the amount of money the unit has at the end of the year. It's just a place to put in a number at the beginning of the year for planning purposes. It is meant to represent how much the unit expects to receive directly from the stake during the year. But when the stake makes a transfer it will show up in the 'Allowance Adjustments' and the ward must reduce the value in the 'Additional Allowance' by the same amount in order to avoid double counting the amount.

Not sure if it's the situation here, but "budget" has multiple meanings. There's the "ward spending plan" and reports that indicate how well actual spending matches that plan. As far as I know, there's no safeguards to make sure the total spending plan is aligned with expected allocations, roll overs, or funds available.

Then there's the category of "budget" to distinguish from other accounts like "Ward Missionary" and the former "Other".

Then there's the allocations that frequently gets referred to as "budget" since that what the money is applied to. These are actual funds.

I don't know if they still do it, but at one time the budget account was a "magic purse" that always had a balance of zero (if you were doing things right). When you cut a check, funds would magically get deposited to zero it out. As long as the total of the "magic funds" didn't exceed the allocation, you were fine.

It's been a long time since I've clerked, but the methods, imprecise language and multiple meanings of "budget" did cause confusion.