Ward budget allotment not received from stake

[allenjpl]

Are you talking about the "anticipated allotment" portion of the view budget screen? I seem to recall from some documentation that I've read recently (could be MLS release notes, could be something else entirely) that the budget screen would be significantly more helpful that it is at present.

I could be wrong. It's happened before.

[freedom55]

Alan, when you indicate that we would be wise to hold off on making transfers I assume you are referring to transfers for the purpose of establishing auxiliary budgets? I have gone ahead and made the appropriate transfers to zero out the Bring Forward amounts for 2011. I hope I haven't spent an unnecessary amount of time??

Your comments please.

Thanks.

[aebrown]

Alan, when you indicate that we would be wise to hold off on making transfers I assume you are referring to transfers for the purpose of establishing auxiliary budgets? I have gone ahead and made the appropriate transfers to zero out the Bring Forward amounts for 2011. I hope I haven't spent an unnecessary amount of time??

Yes, that's correct. Zeroing out the balances to carry forward into 2011 still seems like a good idea. I'm only talking about establishing auxiliary budgets by transferring funds from Budget:Budget Allocations into various subcategories.

[freedom55]

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

[wrigjef]

the easiest option is to leave all the allocations in Budget Allocations and instead use the view/edit budget screen to enter your yearly budget. Then at the end of the year, make a single transfer from Budget Allocations to each sub-category equal to the total yearly expenses. Transfers can be back-dated, so you could even wait to the start of the next year to do this.

Throughout the year, monitor the status of the budget using the Budget Report.

If this were done and all budget $ was left in the allocations pot, wouldn't the budget report, with categories, show everything as negative? I guess the allocations pot would be positive enough to cover everything, hopefully, but I read in another post that it would not be a good idea to include the allocations pot in the budget report.

At what point is it too late to do this? I would assume I could transfer all of our budget money back to allocations to start fresh since the stake has not entered percentages and made allotments yet. Also if an auxilary had a large carry-over that they would rather not lose, after transfering it back to allocations and 0ing out the category to make room for a fresh allocation, would it be appropriate to add the carry-over amount to the normal allocation (not actually transfering funds)?

[aebrown]

If this were done and all budget $ was left in the allocations pot, wouldn't the budget report, with categories, show everything as negative? I guess the allocations pot would be positive enough to cover everything, hopefully, but I read in another post that it would not be a good idea to include the allocations pot in the budget report.

For the fresh new year of 2011, the Budget report should show a bunch of zeroes. Then once you enter the budget amounts in View/Edit Budget, you'll see a lot of positive numbers. That's because the Budget Report shows for each subcategory a balance which is Budget + Balance Forward + Income - Expenses + Transfers, where Budget is the amount entered in View/Edit Budget.

At what point is it too late to do this? I would assume I could transfer all of our budget money back to allocations to start fresh since the stake has not entered percentages and made allotments yet.

If your stake has not entered percentages yet, then they missed the deadline for Q1. That means that your ward will be receiving 0 dollars through the automatic transfer of Budget:Budget Allocations dollars, and so the stake must be planning to write each ward a check to give them their Q1 dollars.

But you can do set your ward budget amounts or make transfers at any time.

Also if an auxilary had a large carry-over that they would rather not lose, after transfering it back to allocations and 0ing out the category to make room for a fresh allocation, would it be appropriate to add the carry-over amount to the normal allocation (not actually transfering funds)?

Perhaps, perhaps not. I addressed a very similar question in this post.