Balance Question

I am reviewing the Financial Statement for our stake today. The budget balance is a few thousand lower than the amount that our budget says should be remaining. There is $0 left to be allocated and the actual budget amounts are now all in for the year (as opposed to the estimated amounts). The only reason I can think of that the remaining budget amount in Budget and the current balance in Financial Statement wouldn't match is from overallocation in previous years that carried over as starting balances.

I reviewed the Budget allocations as far back as I can (2023, which is also the first full year I was stake president so I don't know if you can only see back to the start of your tenure or four years) and there was a cumulative under-allocation of the budget rather than over-allocation.

Since today is 11/1 and the Financial Statement is through 10/31, would it be best practice to just make a negative adjustment in the budget allocation in the Additional Allowance to match up those two figures?

I went through and checked all the wards' Financial Statement balances against their Budget balances and none of them have the same discrepancy. The two numbers match up for each of the wards. It's only the stake that has the discrepancy.

I'm a bit rusty with the terminology, but I know "budget" gets used two different ways and it can be confusing. There's the actual funding from CHQ, and then there's the spending plan. The balance of the funds carries over year to year, unless it's excessive, in which case CHQ will ask for it back.

The spending plan zeros out. However, what some units have done is increase the spending plan for certain categories so that the spending plan reflects the expected funds + carryover. That creates a problem in the following year if the new spending plan is based on the old one and there's no carryover.

I don't think the spending plan is set in stone, so I'd suggest changing it to reflect the funds the stake is actually receiving. Otherwise, there's a risk of overspending so the funds balance goes negative which will result in getting a nastygram from CHQ.

Another "gotacha" is when receipts are processed late. If expenses for the 2025 Christmas party wasn't processed until 2026, then it's coming out of the 2026 budget, not 2025. There's no way to back date a reimbursement to a prior year's budget. (This might be a reason that the spending plan was adjusted upward.)

First, make sure the Additional Allowance on the Prepare Annual Budget screen is 0. That number can be occasionally useful at the beginning of the year but it should be 0 now unless you are expecting something to be transferred to your Budget Allocation category before the end of the year (and at the stake level that is very unlikely unless you plan on having any wards return some of their budget).

Assuming that is true then:

<Budget Balance on Budget Summary tab> + <Available to Assign on Prepare Annual Budget tab> should equal <End Balance on Budget line of Income/Expense Summary page>

If that isn't true then I'd contact the GSD to find out what is going on.

If that is true but the Finance Statement has a different budget balance than the Income/Expense Summary page then I'd first look for any expense or income in the Income/Expense Details page after 10/31. If you can't find any then call GSD as well.

Any over or under allocation in previous years won't affect any of these numbers. If you have a positive or negative balance at the beginning of the year (regardless of over or under allocation in the previous year), that balance will show up in the Prepare Annual Budget tab and will be part of the total amount you have to allocate on that screen.