Tech Forum

The place where the YW want to do their camp out next year is already filling up. To reserve a spot, they need to pay for it.

The YW president asked me if she can pay for it now and then just submit the receipt in January (so that it comes out of next years budget).

This seems like it would work from a finance point of view (meaning it will work in the "books"), but it seems wrong to use the YW President as a "financier" of the YW camp out.

It feels like the ward is getting a short term loan from her.

Is there a process for this? Is there a way I can reimburse her now, but have it come out of next years budget (not this year)?

Yes and no. There is no way to reimburse now and have the expense show up next year.

But if paid now it will reduce any surplus budget for the ward this year or increase any deficit. So next year there will be a correspondingly smaller amount available to the ward.

So one way to handle it is to just charge it to the YW budget this year and then reduce the YW budget by a corresponding amount next year to account for a negative 'carry over'.

However, with a bit of additional work you can make things a bit more explicit in the YW budget:

• Create a new budget category called something like "Next Years Expenses"
• Charge the reimbursement against this category (so it doesn't show up in the YW category).
• Next year assign the YW their budget as if the deposit had not been made.
• At the beginning of next year make a transfer from the YW budget to the 'Next Years Expenses' budget (now the charge will show up in the YW category)

The "Next Year Expenses" will have a negative balance this year and then a positive balance next year but it even out for the ward. In the YW budget it looks like the expense was charged to next years budget.

I like this idea. However I am a bit worried about having a negative balance one year and a positive balance the next.

Right now our ward has a surplus. Could I make a new category like you indicated and allocate to it the amount needed for the camp, then just reduce the YW budget by that amount next year?

We will still get the same amount from head quarters so it seems like it would restore the money to the surplus next year.

You can shuffle the money around within "budget" all you want. All that matters is the category total. As long as "budget" as a whole doesn't go negative, you should be OK.

Vaccano wrote:Right now our ward has a surplus. Could I make a new category like you indicated and allocate to it the amount needed for the camp, then just reduce the YW budget by that amount next year?

Certainly you can do that and it will work fine. But as russellhltn said, it's only the total budget going negative that really matters. As long as your overall budget balance is positive, there really isn't any problem with one sub-category being negative.