Tracking stake budget and expenses and allotment

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
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opee
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#11

Post by opee »

Alan_Brown wrote:This has been helpful for me -- it takes just a few minutes each month to maintain, and sending out letters to the bishops for new quarterly allocations is a breeze. Maybe others will find it helpful, too.

Thanks for sharing. I will have the Financial Clerk play with it and let you know if he has any questions or give you any feedback. I like what you put together.
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bhofmann
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#12

Post by bhofmann »

Yes, very nice. Thanks for sharing it with all of us.
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opee
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#13

Post by opee »

The spreadsheet has been nice to use--thanks again for sharing.

In our Stake MLS, we have budget categories for each unit in the Stake. The categories have a Budget "allotment" that we have entered into MLS, but each month there obviously is never anything taken out of the budget category for the units because the Stake financial does not pull from the ward financial numbers.

Our Stake Financial Clerk was wondering if you could just add an "expense" (not a check) each month during the reconciliation for each Unit's expense so that it will show up in the MLS Budget category as the expenses that are incurred. If this "expense" is created during reconciliation (like is done with Distribution Center orders), will money be taken out of the Stake's funds from SLC (as an actual expense) or will it just be a "phantom" expense that only shows up locally on MLS? If the latter, then it would allow a Stake to track the expenses of the units from month to month.

(Hope this make sense)
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aebrown
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Expense records local to MLS

#14

Post by aebrown »

opee wrote:In our Stake MLS, we have budget categories for each unit in the Stake. The categories have a Budget "allotment" that we have entered into MLS, but each month there obviously is never anything taken out of the budget category for the units because the Stake financial does not pull from the ward financial numbers.

Our Stake Financial Clerk was wondering if you could just add an "expense" (not a check) each month during the reconciliation for each Unit's expense so that it will show up in the MLS Budget category as the expenses that are incurred. If this "expense" is created during reconciliation (like is done with Distribution Center orders), will money be taken out of the Stake's funds from SLC (as an actual expense) or will it just be a "phantom" expense that only shows up locally on MLS? If the latter, then it would allow a Stake to track the expenses of the units from month to month.

Creating an expense record in MLS does not pull any funds from your stake account -- it's only an MLS entry. So the technique you propose would not create any problem of that sort, and so it could be a viable way to track ward budget expenditures at the stake level. You would just create an expense entry for each ward each month. On your reconciliation you would immediately check it off as cleared.

Personally, I would find this technique to be quite confusing. I want the stake MLS financial records to match the actual stake account. Every transaction on the CUFS shows up in MLS somewhere, and almost all MLS transactions show up on the CUFS (the only exceptions would be transfers between subcategories of a single account, such as a transfer from Other to Other:Scouts because a check had been incorrectly categorized).

I also do a regular reconciliation of the Budget category against the CUFS YTD figures, and this would become rather unwieldy with the phantom categories and expenses. So I'll probably stick with my current system, although I can see some benefit in looking at the entire stake budget as a whole from within MLS.

I would prefer to see a new feature of MLS that would help stakes in tracking the entire stake allocation, broken down by wards, with ward expenditures (probably just a monthly summary) downloaded automatically to stake MLS.
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opee
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#15

Post by opee »

Alan_Brown wrote:Every transaction on the CUFS...

CUFS = Church Unit Financial Statement?? Not sure if that it the correct acronymn...
cward-p40
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#16

Post by cward-p40 »

opee wrote:CUFS = Church Unit Financial Statement?? Not sure if that it the correct acronymn...

CUFS does stand for Church Unit Financial Statement.
Merlin Oleson-p40
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Spread sheets

#17

Post by Merlin Oleson-p40 »

My marvelous asst. clerk has prepared a bunch of spread sheets. The budget page shows each ward by month and year to date expenditures compared to assigned budget and over/under year end and YTD totals. Fast offering page shows contribution by month, disbursments by month and store house $ by ward and year end totals. Missionary page shows ward $ on hand in the missionary budget so we can send excess to HQ. On the Quarterly report page he tracks each wards statistics by quarter for the last 5 rears. Great info when it's time to divide wards. You aught to see this stuff!!! Real ammo for the Stake Pres. when he ppi's the bishops. I guess you can do this kind of stuff when you are retired. All this stuff comes right off the monthly financial reports and quarterly reports and reports from the store house. Let me know if any one wants to use Super LEE's Excell forms.
russellhltn
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#18

Post by russellhltn »

Nice!

If you want, you should be able to attach it to your message.
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mkmurray
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#19

Post by mkmurray »

Merlin Oleson wrote:Real ammo for the Stake Pres. when he ppi's the bishops.
Yikes, tough Stake President! :) j/k
Merlin Oleson-p40
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How to attach

#20

Post by Merlin Oleson-p40 »

Attached are SUPER LEE'S SPREAD SHEETS
Attachments
2008STATISTICS.xls
(163 KiB) Downloaded 305 times
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