Tech Forum

Hello,

Our Ward was recently audited by the stake and they found we had too many funds in our 'other' account. The reason for that was we had income for young women's girl's camp and it got deposited into the "Other - YW girls camp" account. My understanding is I need to move those funds from the 'other' account and into the 'young women's' account; however, when I go into 'transfers' on the mls it only allows me to transfer funds between wards in our stake. So how do I do this, or who do I need to have do this?

I am currently serving as the 2nd couselor in the bishopric of that changes anything.

Drew Bahoravitch

drewsky48 wrote:Hello,

Our Ward was recently audited by the stake and they found we had too many funds in our 'other' account. The reason for that was we had income for young women's girl's camp and it got deposited into the "Other - YW girls camp" account. My understanding is I need to move those funds from the 'other' account and into the 'young women's' account; however, when I go into 'transfers' on the mls it only allows me to transfer funds between wards in our stake. So how do I do this, or who do I need to have do this?

I am currently serving as the 2nd couselor in the bishopric of that changes anything.

Drew Bahoravitch

Rather than transferring funds, it would be better to recategorize the appropriate expenses. Using the budget report identify expenses that should have been paid for out of the 'Other - YW girls camp' account but were instead paid from the budget. Identify sufficient funds so that you can zero out the camp account. Then find each of those expenses in the View/Update Expenses screen and click on the expense. In the popup dialog change the category from the budget category to the camp category. Do this for each expense. For the last expense, instead of changing the current category add a new category line for the camp account and put just enough on that line to use up the last of the camp account. Then adjust the budget line so that the total for the expense remains the same.

Effectively this will transfer funds from the camp to the budget account but it will leave a good audit trail of which expenses were actually camp expenses. This will show that the funds were used correctly and not just added to the budget. By policy funds in the Other account must only be used for their intended purposes.

It sounds like you are acting as a bishop's counselor, a membership clerk, and a finance clerk.

You may not transfer funds from an Other subcategory to a Budget category. Funds raised and collected for YW Camp should only be spent on YW Camp expenses.

drewsky48 wrote:Our Ward was recently audited by the stake and they found we had too many funds in our 'other' account. The reason for that was we had income for young women's girl's camp and it got deposited into the "Other - YW girls camp" account. My understanding is I need to move those funds from the 'other' account and into the 'young women's' account; however, when I go into 'transfers' on the mls it only allows me to transfer funds between wards in our stake. So how do I do this, or who do I need to have do this?

First of all, even if you conceptually want to transfer funds between major categories, you can't use the MLS "Transfer" feature to do so -- you would have to write a check to your ward from the source category and deposit (most likely as part of a regular donation batch) into the destination category.

But in this particular case, I would be wary of simply moving funds from Other to Budget. If the amount in Other-YW Camp exceeds the amount actually spent on this year's camp, then you would be violating policy in moving those funds into Budget.

Regardless of whether the funds in Other exceed the expenses, eblood66 gave excellent counsel on how and why you should recategorize expenses, rather than making a transfer.

drewsky48 wrote:Our Ward was recently audited by the stake and they found we had too many funds in our 'other' account.

I'm having a major "huh?" moment here. I assume it's not "too many categories", but rather left over funds. Please keep in mind there are polices about income from non-budget sources - they can only be spent on their intended purpose and any leftover can't just be rolled into the budget. I believe Handbook 1 covers what to do with any excess.

Transfers from "other" to "budget" is frowned upon - if for no other reason that it makes it difficult to see if policy regarding non-budget income has been followed. (There is no problem with transferring from "budget" to "other" as there is no restriction on budget funds.)