Tech Forum

During 2013 tithing settlement a member pointed out one of their donations was allocated to the wrong donation category. The correction was made in late December 2013 but did not show up as accounted for in MLS until Jan 2014. The 2014 budget began showing a negative amount for the money that should have just been moved from one account to another in the 2013 budget. We contacted SLC but the support staff has indicated that the 2014 budget must bear the negative amount that is not a 2014 expense. Is there a way to correct this? Thanks

A little more detail would help. Since budget is impacted, I'm guessing that this somehow involved the budget?

When was the correction entered? I believe most corrections show up as a transaction with a current date (date of correction) not a back-date. So if entered in 2014, I don't know as there's any way to not impact the 2014 budget.

It sounds like a donation was processed for Budget:XYZ in 2013, and a correction was processed in 2014 to change that 2013 donation to be for Other:AMFA:ABC. That created a 2014 transfer from Budget:XYZ to Other:AMFA:ABC. Let's just say the amount was $200. So you essentially have a 2014 charge of $200 to Budget:XYZ and a 2014 credit of $200 to Other:AMFA:ABC.

If that's the case (or something similar), then that means that the Budget balance carried forward into 2014 was artificially high by $200. It's true that there is no way to change the budget expenses for 2014, since any corrections you make will also be in 2014. But you could adjust the amount allocated to the Budget:XYZ. Perhaps that amount is $500. You can adjust that (using View/Edit Budget) to be $700. That will make the net balance available for Budget:XYZ (and for the overall Budget category) equal to what it would have been had you successfully processed the correction in 2013.

Of course, if you take this route, make sure that in your budget planning for 2015 that you factor in that both the budgeted amount and expenses for Budget:XYZ were artificially high by $200 during 2014. But other than that little detail, adjusting the budgeted amount for that subcategory should accomplish what you want.

aebrown wrote:But you could adjust the amount allocated to the Budget:XYZ. Perhaps that amount is $500. You can adjust that (using View/Edit Budget) to be $700. That will make the net balance available for Budget:XYZ (and for the overall Budget category) equal to what it would have been had you successfully processed the correction in 2013.

Is there no way to transfer some funds into Budget:XYZ to effectively cancel out the adjustment? Then no one has to remember that Budget:XYZ is artificially high when it comes time to do the 2015 budget.

russellhltn wrote:

aebrown wrote:But you could adjust the amount allocated to the Budget:XYZ. Perhaps that amount is $500. You can adjust that (using View/Edit Budget) to be $700. That will make the net balance available for Budget:XYZ (and for the overall Budget category) equal to what it would have been had you successfully processed the correction in 2013.

Is there no way to transfer some funds into Budget:XYZ to effectively cancel out the adjustment? Then no one has to remember that Budget:XYZ is artificially high when it comes time to do the 2015 budget.

You can create a new budget category (we called it Previous Year Expense) and then adjust the expense to come out of that category instead. That will have the effect of offsetting the previous adjustment in XYZ and have it show up in the Previous Year Expense category instead where it is more obvious what happened when budgeting the next year. The XYZ budget can be left at it's previous amount but some budget would need to be allowed to this new category.