Budget Annually or Quarterly (Ward Auxiliaries)

Historically, the ward funding has been (and remains) quarterly, but (right/wrong, common, uncommon) our ward has budgeted yearly with the ward auxiliaries.

It seemed MLS is designed to operate this way; quarterly funding from the Stake and yearly budgeting with the auxiliaries. Is this the intent and did anything change as a result of CUBS? Can a Ward budget with the auxiliaries quarterly if they wish?

I ask because some of the updates that came with CUBS have prompted me to wonder if it is the intent that Wards now budget quarterly with the auxiliaries.

ckmcdonald wrote:Historically, the ward funding has been (and remains) quarterly, but (right/wrong, common, uncommon) our ward has budgeted yearly with the ward auxiliaries.

It seemed MLS is designed to operate this way; quarterly funding from the Stake and yearly budgeting with the auxiliaries. Is this the intent and did anything change as a result of CUBS? Can a Ward budget with the auxiliaries quarterly if they wish?

I ask because some of the updates that came with CUBS have prompted me to wonder if it is the intent that Wards now budget quarterly with the auxiliaries.

You definitely want to do budgeting on an annual basis. The Handbook still requires that, and the View/Edit Budget screen works best if you enter annual figures. It will work even better with MLS 3.3.1, so in preparation for the changes to the Budget Report coming in MLS 3.3.1, I would strongly recommend that you enter annual figures for your budget. Yes, that is always a bit of an estimate, since the actual allocations come in quarterly, but MLS 3.3.1 will provide new tools for helping you with that process. If you do anything other than enter annual figures, you'll regret it when MLS 3.3.1 comes out.

As a comment, when I phoned local unit support with Budgeting questions and what to do this year for my stake, I received the information that the team behind the financing piece of MLS were planning on units budgeting on a quarterly basis. Which was why the Budget Report wasn't a priority. Though I'm not sure whether that is an explanation that was assumed from the result or not, I was told that the team would be fixing the issues with MLS 3.3.1.

So far, I've compromised. I use the View/Edit budget to enter the first quarter allocations, and when I get the second quarter allocations, I'll return to the View/Edit Budget school to reallocate the cumulative total.

But to be honest, I'd rather do it on an annual basis. I've chosen to do it on a quarterly basis because I have some serious concerns that our attendance will be dropping this year, and I don't want to promise annual allocations to the auxiliaries and then not receive enough funds to make good on those promises. Instead, they've all been given a memo of what we anticipate their annual budget to be, but that it may be adjusted up or down throughout the year.

This comes with some complications, such as the percentages on the budget report being a reflection on spending from the first of the year to the current time period, and not a reflection of ones annual budget. It also seems to be unpopular among the auxiliaries, but they agree to live with it when given my explanation. So, coming from someone who is budgeting on a quarterly basis, I don't recommend it.

We just had to issue checks to units for 1st quarter (numbers not entered in stake system by deadline). Our instruction to wards was to take the amount of the 1st quarter allocation (calculated based on 2010 3rd qtr reports) and mulitiply it by 4 to get an estimated annual allocation to plug into the view/edit budget screen.

Wow, "you'll regret it" seems pretty ominous. However, I just changed my budgets from quarterly transfers to a yearly budget. Thanks for the advice.

Because they are supposedly "making changes" for how the Budget category will work, at present we are using an Open Org spread sheet to keep track of expenses, and will wait for the revised version to make budget allotments. Right now if you printed a budget report, you would see a couple of organizations with a negative balance.

jwnice wrote:Because they are supposedly "making changes" for how the Budget category will work, at present we are using an Open Org spread sheet to keep track of expenses, and will wait for the revised version to make budget allotments. Right now if you printed a budget report, you would see a couple of organizations with a negative balance.

You're certainly welcome to do that. But it's pretty easy to just enter the budget numbers for 2011 in View/Edit Budget. If you take a couple of minutes to do that, then the budget reports will look reasonable right now. I don't see any reason to wait for 3.3.1 to do this, and copying information to a separate spreadsheet seems like more work than is necessary.

I might be putting this in the wrong place. The budget process has me pretty confused. We entered our budget numbers for each organization in the Budget Allocation worksheet. That is pretty straightforward. However, there does not appear to be any connection between the Budget numbers and Income and Expenses. On the I and E report, we show our first quarter allocation as a transfer. As the organizations spend, their categories show increasingly negative balances. The bottom line total will balance out, but I don't really see a means for reporting the status of an organization's budget as we progress through the year - unless we keep a separate spreadsheet to track that or just do some pencil and paper reports. Am I missing a step? or is this fixed with 3.3.1?

idjeeper2 wrote:However, there does not appear to be any connection between the Budget numbers and Income and Expenses.

I don't think there is any. "Budget" is neither a deposit, withdrawal, nor the movement of real money. It's an assigned number, a limit.

Have you looked at the Budget reports? I think that's what you're looking for.

idjeeper2 wrote:or is this fixed with 3.3.1?

RussllHltn's certainly correct that you should use Budget Reports to view your budget categories -- that's the only way to see the budgets you entered in View/Edit Budget.

But MLS 3.3.1 will make significant improvements to the Budget Reports that will make this even clearer. And the Budget categories will be removed from the Income and Expense Reports (except that there will be a link on the I&E Reports screen to take you to the Budget Reports screen), so this source of confusion will be gone.

RussellHltn wrote:I don't think there is any. "Budget" is neither a deposit, withdrawal, nor the movement of real money. It's an assigned number, a limit.

Have you looked at the Budget reports? I think that's what you're looking for.

aebrown wrote:RussllHltn's certainly correct that you should use Budget Reports to view your budget categories -- that's the only way to see the budgets you entered in View/Edit Budget.

But MLS 3.3.1 will make significant improvements to the Budget Reports that will make this even clearer. And the Budget categories will be removed from the Income and Expense Reports (except that there will be a link on the I&E Reports screen to take you to the Budget Reports screen), so this source of confusion will be gone.

RussllHltn hit it. I just wasn't looking in the right place. We had a session with the Stake Finance Clerk tonight and he was able to show us exactly what we were looking for and how to use it. I think the other part of the problem was seeing the budget expenses on the I&E but not the allocations. Between knowing that we need to use both reports together and any fixes that 3.3.1 has, it should be a lot clearer.

Thanks again.

I have talked to the financial analyst's at church HQ and they explained that Budget Allocations will not communicate or update Income and Expense Summary in the current 3.3 version of CUBS.

They require that the unit finance clerks go to the transfer and set the date back December 31, 2010 and zero out all Budgets so that when the new Budget Allocations communicate and update the Income and Expense Summary it will not cause eratic results.

That means if you have like a budget account say Primary that is -$125.00 you will need to transfer funds from a Budget account that has positive funds to the Primary of +$125.00. If you have positive Budget accounts say Young Womens +$25.00 you will need to transfer it to Budget Allocations.

You should had received your Quarterly Budget Allocation also and you need to go to the budget allocation screen to allocate the budget. Then when you do Expenses against the new Budget and select Primary and reinburse a ward member say $35.00 you will not see it in the Income and Expense Summary but you can go to the Budget Allocation Report and you will see that it shows up there.

Once CUBS 3.3.1 come out they say Budget Allocation spending will then roll up to the Income and Expense Summary.

Hope that helps.