Local Unit Adjustment

[ckmcdonald]

One of our wards has a negative $ amount entry on the View/Edit Budget page. It's directly under the "Estimated Budget Allocation" column. It's in the middle of the page and is called "Local Unit Adjustment" The ward clerk claims he didn't create the entry and we failed to find it in the Income/Expense Report, Transfers, or Budget Allocation notices.

What kind of transaction generates a "Local Unit Adjustment"?

[crislapi]

This means the ward has cut a check against the Budget Allocations category, thereby reducing the amount of the total allocation. The View/Edit budget screen still displays the original amount of the allocations and then subtracts the "adjustment by local unit" amount to reflect the final/actual amount in budget allocations.

To remove it, you must identify the check(s) cut from Budget Allocations and recategorize them to a category other than budget allocations. To do this, run a detail budget report on the Budget Allocations category. Make note of the expenses and then go to View Expenses, find the check, and edit the category. You might be able to also go to View Expenses and run a detail report on the Budget Allocations category, but I seem to remember that didn't work for me. Maybe not. It's easy enough to try both approaches.

Finally, remind your wards that they generally should not be cutting checks against the Budget Allocations category and they also should not be creating sub-categories in Budget Allocations. Several messages have been sent out to clerks expressing that. Let us know if you would like the text from the messages and I'm sure someone here can dig it up!

[ckmccarty]

My ward budget is having a similar problem as ckmcdonald, but instead of a negative amount it has a positive amount in the "local unit adjustment" line, thereby increasing our ward budget. What would be causing this, since it can't be a check, since those cause negative amounts? As a side note both the 2010 and 2011 budget show positive amounts in the "local unit adjustment".

[crislapi]

My ward budget is having a similar problem as ckmcdonald, but instead of a negative amount it has a positive amount in the "local unit adjustment" line, thereby increasing our ward budget. What would be causing this, since it can't be a check, since those cause negative amounts? As a side note both the 2010 and 2011 budget show positive amounts in the "local unit adjustment".

Has your stake cut you a check for budget that was deposited in Budget Allocations? This is definitely how you got a budget to start up after CUBS. It may be that they had to cut you another one this year? Otherwise, a donation may have been accidentally recorded into this category. I don't think transfers show as local unit adjustments.

To locate the transaction, you can run the same report - a detail budget report for current year on budget allocations and all it's subcategories.

[allenjpl]

My ward budget is having a similar problem as ckmcdonald, but instead of a negative amount it has a positive amount in the "local unit adjustment" line, thereby increasing our ward budget. What would be causing this, since it can't be a check, since those cause negative amounts? As a side note both the 2010 and 2011 budget show positive amounts in the "local unit adjustment".

It sounds like what happened in your case is that in 2010, the Stake cut you a check representing what they were giving you as your allocation for the remainder of the year. That was the 2010 Local Unit Adjustment. Then, instead of using the percentage pass-through setting, the stake either 1. Withheld all of your allocation, and disbursed it manually (your allocation for 1Q11 is 0, but you have an adjustment) or 2. Allocation a portion, but changed their minds and decided to allocate more. They would then cut you a check, which would show up as an adjustment. In either case, it shows up as an adjustment in 2011.