Tech Forum

Does anyone have a list of recommended budget categories, or categories that they have found helpful in their ward? Any thoughts or suggestions on setting up categories would be appreciated.

Some of the most common budget categories are aligned with the unit auxiliaries because they are the ones who will need funding to support their programs, supplies and activities. Off the top of my head some of the most common budget categories are Young Men, Young Women, Primary, Relief Society, Elders Quorum, High Priests Group, Activities, Sunday School, Single Adults, and Ward/Branch Administration. There may be more. Your local needs should be the guide in determining these categories.

jdlessley wrote:Some of the most common budget categories are aligned with the unit auxiliaries because they are the ones who will need funding to support their programs, supplies and activities. Off the top of my head some of the most common budget categories are Young Men, Young Women, Primary, Relief Society, Elders Quorum, High Priests Group, Activities, Sunday School, Single Adults, and Ward/Branch Administration. There may be more. Your local needs should be the guide in determining these categories.

In addition to that list, many wards split out Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. Also, Youth Conference is often tracked separately. There are many combined youth activities, so some wards choose to have a separate category for combined YM/YW, but others just choose to split the costs of such activities between YM and YW.

You can imagine many other categories, but it is really a local decision. The main thing is to make sure that someone will be responsible for each budget category and make sure that expenses stay within the budget.

I found the budget sub-categories rather useful, but I don't know if they would have been confusing to others - I was the only one using them. For example,

Stake Administration:
-PO Box
-Fire Permit
-CLVI license
-Stamps
-Office supplies

Library

Stake Auxiliaries:
-HP
-EQ
-RS
-YM
-YW
-Primary

Multi-Stake Purposes:
-Regional Public Affairs

Public Affairs

I haven't found it useful at the stake level to break out the youth camps into a separate category. This way, the YM/YW leaders can decide for themselves how much of their budgets they wish to dedicate to camps and how much to other activities. I actually had sub-sub- and sub-sub-sub-categories. I don't think I'd do that again. Also, sub-sub-categories in the other account was a mistake. I thought I'd be clever and track donations into the other account by ward. I wasn't thinking at the time that the one check we wrote wouldn't be from these sub-sub-categories. Now I have a bit of a mess to clean up....

I did something similar, only at the Ward level. I just logically broke it down into 5 major categories with the subs underneath.

:YOUTH[INDENT]Young Men
Young Women
Youth Conference
[/INDENT]ADULTS[INDENT] Elders
High Priests
Relief Society
YSA Activities
[/INDENT]PRIMARY[INDENT] Activity Days
Cub Scouts
Quarterly & Other
[/INDENT]WARD ACTIVITIES[INDENT] Christmas Party
Halloween Party
[/INDENT][Other activities as your Ward sees fit]

WARD SUPPLIES[INDENT] General
Library
Missionary Plaques
Ward Choir
[/INDENT]Anyway, you get the idea. I put the ":" in front of YOUTH so it would alphabetically float to the top as this is where the bulk of my checks seem to go and this makes it easier to get at.

Mike

Mikerowaved wrote:I put the ":" in front of YOUTH so it would alphabetically float to the top as this is where the bulk of my checks seem to go and this makes it easier to get at.

Back in the FIS days, we used to put an "account number" in the front to force everything to sort the way we wanted it.

At least your list includes the YSA. Nothing for the SA?