Budget Category Question - Help!

I've been serving as Ward Finance Clerk in my YSA ward for about 2 months. I noticed that when I tried to print off the budget balances it didn't show anything for FHE, Activites Committee, Bishopric, and a few other categories. The last financial clerk apparently set them up as sub-categories under the Budget Allocation tab. These balances don't show up on any statements even though there is money in them. I've tried to unactivate them but it shows a balance and I can't find where to zero out those categories.

Has anyone experienced this with the new financial system?

kentjohnson4 wrote:I've been serving as Ward Finance Clerk in my YSA ward for about 2 months. I noticed that when I tried to print off the budget balances it didn't show anything for FHE, Activites Committee, Bishopric, and a few other categories. The last financial clerk apparently set them up as sub-categories under the Budget Allocation tab. These balances don't show up on any statements even though there is money in them. I've tried to unactivate them but it shows a balance and I can't find where to zero out those categories.

Has anyone experienced this with the new financial system?

The Budget Allocation category is treated specially. We were instructed in the CUBS clarification message sent 24 Oct 2010 that we should not use that category for any expenses (you can see that on the wiki at Issue: The budget allocation subcategory is a negative number).

So you need to set up subcategories that are under Budget (and not under Budget Allocation). They probably need to be set up as subcategories of Budget:Miscellaneous, since you can't create new subcategories of Budget. Then recategorize all activity that was put in those subcategories of Budget Allocation to now be in the correct new categories. Then your reports should be correct.

Thanks! So in order to zero those categories out and have them removed I need to transfer the funds out of the sub-categories into the main Budget Allocations category?

kentjohnson4 wrote:Thanks! So in order to zero those categories out and have them removed I need to transfer the funds out of the sub-categories into the main Budget Allocations category?

No. Do not make transfers. Instead, go to each expense or donation that was done against those subcategories of Budget Allocation and change the category to be the new categories. That way you will be restoring the transactions to the way they should have been done in the first place. Changing the category on each of these transactions will have the effect of transferring money out of those subcategories, but will transfer the funds to or from the correct categories. There should be no impact on the parent Budget Allocations category.

As a note, there are other reasons relating to finance statement/MLS balance fixes pushed from headquarters, or the Cubs transition that categories can end up under budget allocation where transfers are the appropriate thing to do, but in this case, from what you've described, I sustain aebrown's advice. Additionally, please check to see if there are any balance forward amounts... if there are not, you are ok. If there are, you'll need to re-categorize all expenses from the cubs transition to present. If there are still positive or negative balances in the balance forward, you'll need to work with CHQ to fix those balances...

Hopefully it is just as you explained and everything you need to worry about is in 2011.

Thanks for the help. Do I need to make note of the changes on any of the expense check stubs? Or can I just go row-by-row in the history and change to the new and correct categories without documenting on the expense check stubs in our expenses folder?

kentjohnson4 wrote:Thanks for the help. Do I need to make note of the changes on any of the expense check stubs? Or can I just go row-by-row in the history and change to the new and correct categories without documenting on the expense check stubs in our expenses folder?

I suppose that depends on how picky your auditor is, if he happens to check one of those expenses. You have an electronic record of the category change (visible under View/Edit Expenses). The basic category hasn't really changed -- if it was originally charged to Relief Society it will still be charged to Relief Society -- but now the Relief Society category it is charged to is in the right place in the category hierarchy.

Obviously the safest course is to make a note on the stub, but I don't see how an audit really could or should detect that a category change within the Budget category was made. There is a question (#19 on the Ward Audit) that asks: "Look at the following support documents to make sure all details are consistent with the Expense Detail Report." But these support documents relate to how the check was written, and don't check how the category may have been changed afterwards.