CUBS: Setting budget categories to zero

After the CUBS transition, according to the Budget Allocation Report, our unit ended up with the following budget categories:

Administration
Budget
Budget Allocations
Budget Allocations: Library
Budget Allocations: Relief Society
Budget Allocations: Ward Activities
Budget Allocations: Ward Supplies
Budget Allocations: Young Men
Budget Allocations: Young Men
Budget Allocations: Young Women
Budget Allocations: Young Women
Curriculum
Distributions Center Charges
Elders Quorum
High Priests Group
Library
Other
Primary
Relief Society
Single Adults
Sunday School
Young Men
Young Women

My understanding is that we are supposed to transfer amounts between all of the Budget categories (excluding the Missionary and Other categories) so that they begin with a zero balance as of 24 Oct 2010.

Some of the budget categories are showing amounts in Income and/or Expenses, though most are already showing zero. After researching the forums, wiki, and and MLS messages from CHQ, I'm still not understanding what needs to be zero and what I can safely not worry about.

Specifically, am I allowed to have any budget category that shows a positive or negative balance, (like maybe the Administration category)? Or must all the categories show and ending balance of zero as of 24 Oct 2010?

If I am allowed to have a positive or negative balance in the Administration category, that suggests to me that I should transfer money in and out of it as needed to set all the remaining budget categories to zero (excluding the Missionary categories and the Other categories, of course). Is that a correct assumption?

jbh001 wrote:My understanding is that we are supposed to transfer amounts between all of the Budget categories (excluding the Missionary and Other categories) so that they begin with a zero balance as of 24 Oct 2010.

Some of the budget categories are showing amounts in Income and/or Expenses, though most are already showing zero. After researching the forums, wiki, and and MLS messages from CHQ, I'm still not understanding what needs to be zero and what I can safely not worry about.

I would move that date to 18 Oct 2010. The stake will (or should) cut you a check equal to you 2010 budget minus your YTD expenses up to and including 17 Oct 2010. It makes sense, then, that your expenses start again at $0 on the 18th. Your budget should be adjusted so this is the case. I've also noticed that if you cut checks on the 17th, your date must be the 18th to receive the corresponding transfer. However, if you go too much further, you might receive expenses that were not covered (for example I see DC purchases dated the 22nd here).

Any balance in the following categories should be transferred to Budget:Budget Allocations.

Budget Allocations: Library
Budget Allocations: Relief Society
Budget Allocations: Ward Activities
Budget Allocations: Ward Supplies
Budget Allocations: Young Men
Budget Allocations: Young Men
Budget Allocations: Young Women
Budget Allocations: Young Women

Having done this and using an I&E report, 1 Jan 2010 - 18 Oct 2010, all budget subcategories have a balance of zero.

jbh001 wrote:Specifically, am I allowed to have any budget category that shows a positive or negative balance, (like maybe the Administration category)? Or must all the categories show and ending balance of zero as of 24 Oct 2010?

Again, be careful of the date. Some expenses posted during the transition week. These are considered post-CUBS and would start you with a negative balance instead of $0. Using the 18th seems to work best for me.

jbh001 wrote:If I am allowed to have a positive or negative balance in the Administration category, that suggests to me that I should transfer money in and out of it as needed to set all the remaining budget categories to zero (excluding the Missionary categories and the Other categories, of course). Is that a correct assumption?

Yes, I would think a ward should have zero budget balance for all subcategories on 18 Oct 2010. As for why, try this post. Mostly, a starting balance in any subcategory other than $0 will make your local balance differ from CUBS.

As a ward, I would not do any transfers (other than moving income to Budget:Allocations) until you receive a check from the stake. When/if you do the transfers, they should be coming from Budget:Budget Allocations and not Budget:Administration. The only reason to do a transfer now from Budget:Administration is if you recategorized all your 2010 expenses. See the same post linked to in the previous paragraph for an example.

Sorry, I'm still feeling really dense about all this. So to clarify, if my budget report looks like this (as of 18 Oct 2010 @ 12:01AM) ...

Category______________Bal.For.__Inc_______Exp______Tran_____Bal
Administration________$0.00_____$0.00__-$300.00__$500.00__$200.00
Budget Allocation_____$0.00_____$0.00_____$0.00____$0.00___$0.00
Budget Allocation:YW__$0.00___$100.00_____$0.00____$0.00___$0.00
Young Women___________$0.00_____$0.00___-$50.00____$0.00__-$50.00
Total:________________$0.00___$100.00__-$350.00__$500.00__$150.00

... then I need to do transfers to make it look like this (as of 18 Oct 2010 @ 12:01AM) ...

Category______________Bal.For.__Inc_______Exp______Tran_____Bal
Administration________$0.00_____$0.00__-$300.00__$300.00____$0.00
Budget Allocation_____$0.00_____$0.00_____$0.00__$150.00_$150.00
Budget Allocation:YW__$0.00___$100.00_____$0.00_-$100.00____$0.00
Young Women___________$0.00_____$0.00___-$50.00___$50.00____$0.00
Total:________________$0.00___$100.00__-$350.00__$400.00__$150.00

... but not to bother making any of these transfers until the check from the stake is received? (and deposited into Budget: Budget Allocations?)


(There is a reason I never became an accountant.)

jbh001 wrote:... then I need to do transfers to make it look like this (as of 18 Oct 2010 @ 12:01AM) ...
... but not to bother making any of these transfers until the check from the stake is received? (and deposited into Budget: Budget Allocations?)

There are two transfers we are referring to. There are zeroing transfers (zero out subcategories) and there are balance transfers (used to transfer budget funds to subcategories so that, when combined with expenses, the balance reflects their true remaining balance).

On first observation, I find it odd that your Budget: Young Women category already has a $50 expense drawn from it. Is that hypothetical? That should be impossible, as that category didn't exist yet. The only way to get a balance in it for this date range would be to recategorize old expenses. Side note as well - the Budget:Bud All:BU-YW should have a balance of $100, making the total remaining balance $250.

For the zeroing transfers, I would only transfer funds from sub-sub categories to their sub-category. So from this:
Category______________Bal.For.__Inc_______Exp_____ _Tran_____Bal
Administration________$0.00_____$0.00__-$300.00__$500.00__$200.00
Budget Allocation_____$0.00_____$0.00_____$0.00____$0.00____$0.00
Budget Allocation:YW__$0.00___$100.00_____$0.00____$0.00__$100.00
Young Women___________$0.00_____$0.00___-$50.00____$0.00__-$50.00
Total:________________$0.00___$100.00__-$350.00__$500.00__$250.00

to this:

Category______________Bal.For.__Inc_______Exp_____ _Tran_____Bal
Administration________$0.00_____$0.00__-$300.00__$500.00__$200.00
Budget Allocation_____$0.00_____$0.00_____$0.00__$100.00__$100.00
Budget Allocation:YW__$0.00___$100.00_____$0.00_-$100.00____$0.00
Young Women___________$0.00_____$0.00___-$50.00____$0.00__-$50.00
Total:________________$0.00___$100.00__-$350.00__$500.00__$250.00

I would not do any additional transfers from this point until I receive the October financial statement and the 2010 remaining budget check from the stake, which you should deposit in Budget:Budget Allocations. Once you have deposited it, you can then transfer balances from there to other subcategories should you choose. These transfers will create budget balances for the subcategories. Expenses charged to the sub-category will reduce the balance.

I'm doing some more digging and I think I've found another bug that makes Budget:Administration negative. It seems to be related to checks issued in 2006 or earlier but voided in 2007 or later. A detailed I&E of this unit's Budget:Administration category for 2007 shows an expense and corresponding transfer for all but 2 checks, both of which were voided. One was issued and voided in 2007. It no longer shows in the expenses section, but the transfer still shows. A negative transfer has also been entered for this expense to cancel out the first one.

The second check, however, was issued in 2006 so while it does not show up on the expenses list either, it does not have the first (positive) transfer meant to cover the check. It does have the negative transfer meant to cancel the first transfer.

When I look at my post-CUBS I&E report for 1 Jan - 18 Oct, my remaining budget balance is EXACTLY the amount of this one check. Hmm...

crislapi wrote:On first observation, I find it odd that your Budget: Young Women category already has a $50 expense drawn from it. Is that hypothetical? That should be impossible, as that category didn't exist yet. The only way to get a balance in it for this date range would be to recategorize old expenses.

No, it is not hypothetical, but I haven't checked to see if another clerk had already entered an expense before the budget report was printed. I'm pretty sure none of the old expenses have been recategorized, but I will double-check.

EDIT: Just to follow up, the YW negative balance was coming from an expense created by another clerk after the CUBS transition. Printing the Budget Report with and end date of 18-Oct-2010 instead of 24-Oct-2010 showed the new YW category with a zero balance instead of a negative balance.

So we ventured to try and zero out the Budget:Budget Allocations subcategories. It almost went smoothly. Unfortunately MLS did not display the two Budget:Budget Allocations: Young Women categories in a consistent sequence between the Income & Expense report and the Transfers screen. And since it was impossible from the spelling to determine which was which, trying to zero out a $200 amount ended up being a $3600 amount before MLS finally transferred the correct amount from the correct subcategory.

In the end, I think it was mostly out of luck, because to zero out one of the YW categories we ended up telling MLS to take out an additional $3600 from the account that was already showing a balance of -$3600, which should have made it -$7200, but instead left it at a zero balance.

At least the both subcategories are now finally at zero.

On a happier note, transferring amounts around our Other sub categories worked fine the first time, and we ended up with no discrepancies.

And as a side note, we got the first part of our October 2010 CUFS today. It covers the period from 01-Oct-2010 to 19-Oct-2010 and looks like all the previous CUFS. So we started using a date of 20-Oct-2010 for the transaction date for the subcategory transfers. I expect that when the second part that covers 20-Oct-2010 to 31-Oct-2010 arrives, it will use the new CUFS layout.

I also ran into this very fun activity in several wards, I found, as you did, that the order is different. If you have 2 accounts in income and expense that are exactly the same spelling, this is the scenario:

Income Expense
girls camp - this I'll call girl camp (1)
girls camp - this I'll call girl camp (2)

Transfer
girls camp (2)
girls camp (1)