Post CUBS Budget balances

I've seached through this forum for this information and maybe I'm just not seeing the answer. If this has already been answered, feel free to direct me to the correct thread.

My question is this: I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out what our "beginning budget sub-category balances" are post-CUBS transition. As I was re-reading the Nov clarification from SLC for the umpteenth time, I got the idea that basically any remaining budget from pre-CUBS transition was *poofed* and we should be starting over with whatever the Stake allocates to us for the remainder of the year. Is that a correct interpretation? I want to make sure that my year-end budget amounts in MLS are correct.

Also, I went through and transferred any remaining amounts from my old sub-categories to zero them out. The Income and Expense report shows $0 in those categories, but the Budget screen shows the negative amount I transferred out of those categories. What gives?

If you printed a budget report from 10/17, use the remaining balances. If you didn't, talk to the Bishop and have him decide how to allocate the last quarter's allotment. That's about the only way you can do it.

The "remaining budget" should have exactly equaled what the stake gave to you. If it didn't, it means that there were items not accounted for, like Distribution Center charges.

allenjpl wrote:The "remaining budget" should have exactly equaled what the stake gave to you.

If that's what the stake did. They didn't have to do that.

Keep in mind there's a difference between "budget" and "balance". Budget is the remaining allocation that you have to spend. Balance is dollars in the account.

Pre-CUBS, the balance was always zero (or the outstanding checks, depending on how you did it) because the budget category was a "magic purse" deal where any checks you wrote were reimbursed as soon as they cleared. The Budget was how far you could push the "magic purse" before getting yelled at by the stake.

Unfortunately, the unit budget figure was something between the stake and the ward. CHQ had no knowledge of that. So post-CUBS, your Budget and Balance are both zero. It's up to the stake to give the wards actual money to finish out the year under CUBS. There's no longer a budget for the ward as a whole. Only a Balance. Just like a personal checking account. The "magic purse" is gone.

Now, one would expect the stake to give the same amount as the pre-CUBS ending balance (plus any adjustments). But if they're having a shortfall, or if there's some other problem, the stake president could have decided on a different number. How much each ward has to spend is his prerogative.

I also wanted to add to the OP question. I feel it goes hand and hand.

Forgive me for this rookie question but the Stake Clerk handed me a check that was supposed to off set the negative balance I have in our budget post CUBS upgrade. What am I to do with this check?

I appreciate your help,

Michael

The check can be processed with a deposit batch and credited to your Budget:Budget Allocations account. Later you can transfer amounts from this account into individual Budget: subcategories. Alternately, if you already know how much you want in each subcategory, you can credit directly to the subcategories.

dnslynn wrote:The check can be processed with a deposit batch and credited to your Budget:Budget Allocations account. Later you can transfer amounts from this account into individual Budget: subcategories. Alternately, if you already know how much you want in each subcategory, you can credit directly to the subcategories.

I know this may sound like a rookie question but how would I go about making a deposit batch to credit the Budget: Budget Allocations account?

Thank you for your patience,

Michael

Sorry if this is a bit of a thread jacking, but here goes my situation that goes somewhat with the OP:

Using "summary by sub-category" after the CUBS changeover my Other:Authorized Member Finance Activities Category shows a (-)$29,133.84 for the current year, with a Balance forward of (-)$22,742.51

The "summary by category" shows that the total for the Other category for the current year is (+)$3,083.49
The main problem is that our units "Other" category for scout camp funds shows (+)$9,188.03 - But I know that it should only have about (+)$2,000 in it to carryover to next year.
Our "Other" category for YW Camp has a similar issue

The CUBS update pushed all the Other expenses (for the past 5-7 (?) years) into the lump of the newly created first category - I guess that next year I will create a new category for the current Year and be able to kindof start fresh, but it is strange having the ongoing negative main category and working around that with all the other "other" sub-categories

Thoughts, suggestions, workarounds?
Thanks

mduvernay wrote:I know this may sound like a rookie question but how would I go about making a deposit batch to credit the Budget: Budget Allocations account?

In a regular donation batch, process the check from the stake like any other donation. For the category, click on tne blue Budget link and then select Budget:Budget Allocations

aebrown wrote:In a regular donation batch, process the check from the stake like any other donation. For the category, click on tne blue Budget link and then select Budget:Budget Allocations

Thank you aebrown! You're a life saver! These forums are quite helpful for a new Ward Clerk like myself.

I went into the Ward tonight to do the end of year stuff, and do some transfers between budget categories, and boy was I surprised.

First, on 31 October, following the instructions from SLC, I did the transfers into the Budget: Allocation account. Tonight I went in and saw than on 7 November, all of those transfers that I had done a week earlier had been reversed. Every one to the exact dollar amount, except for one that was adjusted to cover a couple of checks that had been written. The balance was exactly the same as they were before I did the transfers in October.

So I figured that I would just transfer the dollars back into the account where they should be, but Lo and Behold, the transfer screen would not let me enter any dollar amounts. I tried many different combinations to see if it was account specific, but it wasn't.

Any ideas at all out there what is happening in our situation?

hjohanson wrote:Sorry if this is a bit of a thread jacking, but here goes my situation that goes somewhat with the OP:

Using "summary by sub-category" after the CUBS changeover my Other:Authorized Member Finance Activities Category shows a (-)$29,133.84 for the current year, with a Balance forward of (-)$22,742.51

The "summary by category" shows that the total for the Other category for the current year is (+)$3,083.49
The main problem is that our units "Other" category for scout camp funds shows (+)$9,188.03 - But I know that it should only have about (+)$2,000 in it to carryover to next year.
Our "Other" category for YW Camp has a similar issue

The CUBS update pushed all the Other expenses (for the past 5-7 (?) years) into the lump of the newly created first category - I guess that next year I will create a new category for the current Year and be able to kindof start fresh, but it is strange having the ongoing negative main category and working around that with all the other "other" sub-categories

Thoughts, suggestions, workarounds?
Thanks

Holding funds in any Other category is asking for trouble. I ask the clerks in my stake to only deposit funds in an other account if it is going to a specific purpose and the Bishop should always have a plan to expend the funds ASAP. I also recommend that they do everything they can to make sure other is cleared out and balanced before the end of the year.

hjohanson wrote:Sorry if this is a bit of a thread jacking, but here goes my situation that goes somewhat with the OP:

Using "summary by sub-category" after the CUBS changeover my Other:Authorized Member Finance Activities Category shows a (-)$29,133.84 for the current year, with a Balance forward of (-)$22,742.51

The "summary by category" shows that the total for the Other category for the current year is (+)$3,083.49
The main problem is that our units "Other" category for scout camp funds shows (+)$9,188.03 - But I know that it should only have about (+)$2,000 in it to carryover to next year.
Our "Other" category for YW Camp has a similar issue

The CUBS update pushed all the Other expenses (for the past 5-7 (?) years) into the lump of the newly created first category - I guess that next year I will create a new category for the current Year and be able to kindof start fresh, but it is strange having the ongoing negative main category and working around that with all the other "other" sub-categories

Thoughts, suggestions, workarounds?
Thanks

Why don't you just transfer all of the funds from the AUMF (previously "Other") subcategories to the parent AUMF category. Then, transfer back to the subcategories what their appropriate balances should be. MY experience was that all of the deposits and donations remained in the old subcategories, but that all of the expenses went to the parents category. As a result, we had balances for "Scout Camp" that far exceeded what should have been there. Unlike, say, the Budget categories, there shouldn't have been any unreconciled items (like Distribution Center charges) that suddenly appeared after CUBS, so the positive and negative balances should cancel each other out, leaving you with only the correct amounts.

My Bishop and I had this same problem last night. Our "Other" accounts were a complete mess.

After peeling it back, this is apparently what happened: During CUBS migration, all expenses were rolled into "Other:Authorized Member Financed..." - the parent category, while all the donations remained in their respective Other categories. This left the parent "Other" category (in the new Income and Expense Report) with a huge negative balance (essentially everything we've paid through Other for the past 3 years), and each individual "Other" category had a huge positive balance because it only showed all donations from the last 3 years.

Our initial thought was to reconstitute the expenses (since the category of the donations are uneditable). We did this for the 2010 expenses, but ended up with every expense being listed on our subsequent Finance Statement as an "Action Item" because it went from "Cleared" to "Sent" status (still not sure what the resolution is on this). We still had a huge problem with the balances because the other previous 2 years' expenses were not reconstituted.

Our final solution was to just transfer all of the balances out of the individual "Other" sub categories into the main "Other" category. We backdated the transfer to 31 Dec 2010. Then we just did a calculation of what we thought was the fair amount that should be allocated to each "Other" subcategory and dated that transfer Dec 31 2010 as well.

This gave us a nice CLEAN report for Jan 1, with the balance forward of all sub accounts being the amount we decided they should have for 2011 (not the thousands of roll over $ from years past minus transfers).

Now we've just got our fingers crossed that it will all match up with our next Financial Statement...

sammythesm wrote:Our final solution was to just transfer all of the balances out of the individual "Other" sub categories into the main "Other" category. We backdated the transfer to 31 Dec 2010. Then we just did a calculation of what we thought was the fair amount that should be allocated to each "Other" subcategory and dated that transfer Dec 31 2010 as well.

That is the correct action. It was the action prescribed in the MLS Message sent out at the time of the CUBS transition in October, and which is on the wiki. See the section Subcategories. Although the instructions didn't mention a particular date to use for the transfers, I have found that using an 18 October 2010 date worked well, since the category balance issues occurred after October 17. But now that we are in 2011, your choice of 31 Dec 2010 will probably work just fine.

aebrown wrote:That is the correct action. It was the action prescribed in the MLS Message sent out at the time of the CUBS transition in October, and which is on the wiki. See the section Subcategories. Although the instructions didn't mention a particular date to use for the transfers, I have found that using an 18 October 2010 date worked well, since the category balance issues occurred after October 17. But now that we are in 2011, your choice of 31 Dec 2010 will probably work just fine.

Thanks much, came in to find out where to deposit checks left with a balanced OTHER category.

aebrown wrote:That is the correct action. It was the action prescribed in the MLS Message sent out at the time of the CUBS transition in October, and which is on the wiki. See the section Subcategories. Although the instructions didn't mention a particular date to use for the transfers, I have found that using an 18 October 2010 date worked well, since the category balance issues occurred after October 17. But now that we are in 2011, your choice of 31 Dec 2010 will probably work just fine.

I know I am a little far down the road to finally get to working on rebalancing my stake AMFA accounts. Suffice it to say I've had long series of medical issues and am just now out of the woods enough to deal with these accounts. I did the necessary transfers to get the AFMA subcategories to where they need to be. However, I am left with a negative balance in the roll-up AMFA category.
I've reviewed the Church CUBS directions whith address the subcategories and searched the forum, but am still at a loss on how to zero out the roll-up category. It was zero on my pre-CUBS printouts.

jeromer7 wrote:I've reviewed the Church CUBS directions whith address the subcategories and searched the forum, but am still at a loss on how to zero out the roll-up category. It was zero on my pre-CUBS printouts.

See the thread Other (Authorized Member Financed Activities) balances don't match CUFS for audit. But make sure you read to the end of that thread so you'll know what process you'll be facing.

aebrown wrote:But make sure you read to the end of that thread so you'll know what process you'll be facing.

The process sounds a bit daunting, but I'll follow the advice in that thread as I see little alternative to getting the AMFA category squared away. Thanks for the lead.

I was very pleased to find that MLS 3.3.1 Budgeting worked quite well and puts us back to pretty much the way we were used to handling the Budget pre-CUBS. My thanks to the MLS team for that!!!