Income & expense: negative amount. in other

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sklamm-p40
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Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Jun 07, 2009 11:56 am
Location: USA. Cedar Valley UT.

Income & expense: negative amount. in other

#1

Post by sklamm-p40 »

I am trying to get rid of a -$13.00 amount showing up on the Other row
in Income & expense.

Here is what I've tried to do to isolate the amount.

Income & expense > summary by sub-Category > daterange:Jan 1 - June 30

I select the other category, this automatically selects all the Other:sub-categories rows.

I show a balance forward in the Other category, (not a sub-category but the main Other row) of -$13.00

This is the only "Other" row that is out of balance. All of the other:sub-category rows balance to 0.00

to try and narrow down were the balance forward came from I selected "all" in the date range.

This moved the -$13.00 to the transfers colum.

to try and find the specific transer. I went to Transfers > view transfers
set report to "details by category" selected other, and the date range to "all"

This found one transfer of -$13.00 that was manually entered. (it had a comment filled out.) the status is cleared.

I clicked the reference no. on the left, to enter the transaction, and it looks like a transfer with a source amount of $13.00 and a destination of $0.00 (this doesn't seem right)

It seems this is the errant transaction, but I don't see a way to delete it.
Or edit any of the values. tHey are all grayed out.

I am still unsure of what to do, but it seems I need to undo this transaction by either zeroing out the $13.00 amount, or deleting the transaction all together.

any suggestions appreciated. -Thanks.
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aebrown
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Posts: 15153
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:48 pm
Location: Draper, Utah

#2

Post by aebrown »

sklamm wrote:This found one transfer of -$13.00 that was manually entered. (it had a comment filled out.) the status is cleared.

I clicked the reference no. on the left, to enter the transaction, and it looks like a transfer with a source amount of $13.00 and a destination of $0.00 (this doesn't seem right)
You've done a good job of narrowing down the source of the problem, which is the first step.

What you are seeing is the result of an Other Item entered during the Reconciliation process. That is the only way to create a Transfer that has only a source amount and no destination amount. That may not "seem right" if you think of it as a normal transfer, but it is quite natural once you realize it is an Other Item.

So to continue your detective work, you will want to do the following:
  1. Find the reconciliation in question. The reconciliation report should have been filed with the corresponding Church Unit Financial Statement.
  2. Examine both the reconciliation report and the CUFS to see if you can get more details as to what the source of the issue is. Hopefully the comment on the transfer will also give you some clues.
My guess is that there was some $13.00 transaction on the CUFS which needed to be dealt with in order to make the reconciliation balance. This could have been a returned check, or a deposit less than call, or something else like that. But then whoever did the reconciliation created an Other Item to bring the reconciliation into balance, rather than creating a Temporary Item and dealing with the true source of the problem.

So if my theory is correct, then to fix this, you need to do two or three things:
  1. Find and fix the source of the problem. This may involve canceling a donation or making some other change to a donation or expense.
  2. On your next reconciliation, create an Other Item in the "Other" category for +$13.00 to undo the erroneous transaction created during that other reconciliation.
  3. You may need to create a Temporary Item for -$13.00 to bring the reconciliation into balance until the effect of the true fix shows up on a future CUFS. When you reconcile that month, then you can check off the Temporary Item and be completely done.
You can find some helpful information in the Reconciliation wiki article, which also includes links to other wiki articles and to the online training lesson Reconciling the Church Unit Financial Statement.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
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gregwanderson
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Posts: 702
Joined: Thu Apr 15, 2010 10:34 pm
Location: Huntsville, UT, USA

#3

Post by gregwanderson »

I just wanted to confirm something. Does the Financial Statement show a zero balance for Other? So the overall objective is to make MLS agree with the statement, right?
crislapi
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Posts: 1267
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 4:05 pm
Location: USA

#4

Post by crislapi »

Seconding Alan_Brown - my thought is that someone entered an expense during the reconcile process using the "Other Items" section of the reconcile. This will enter expenses as transfers. So when viewing the transfer, there is a $0 on one side (didn't actually transfer anything)

My other guess is that, because it was in Other and not a subcategory, it got overlooked when zeroing out the account. Follow Alan_Brown's suggestions. I'd add one - in the future, enter all expenses using the "Enter Expenses" with the "not a check" option selected. That way, all expenses show as, well, expenses!
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