Annual Budget

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
ralitaco
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#21

Post by ralitaco »

crislapi wrote:You could transfer an amount equal to the annual budget amount to each category. This will cause your Budget:Budget Allocation subcategory to go extremely negative at the beginning of the year.
This is EXACTLY what I was thinking.
And after reading the rest of the thread, this is what I plan to do UNLESS I am told it is prohibitted.

Overall, the positive sum of the auxillary categories will offset the large negative in the Budget:Allocations category thereby having no effect on the overall "Budget" category.
This should keep CHQ at bay since I don't think they will be looking at each indvidual category and I don't think they differentiate b/n Budget:Allocations or Budget:Elders.

If the overall Budget does go negative, it will be the result of total overspending and not the transfers. And as has been stated already, this is common due to Scout camp, etc. and so long as it is not chronic, should not be a problem.

Overall, I just think it will be very easy to show the Aux's where they stand if I transfer their Annual projected budget amount now instead of doing it quarterly. This way the individual category balance will only go into the negative if they overspend their Total budget.

As a safety net, I have underestimated our projected Stake allotments and rounded up the spending from previous years. If by Q4 it looks like the overall budget will be in the negative, I can reduce the aux's budgets by transferring back into the Allocations category.
ralitaco
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#22

Post by ralitaco »

Just curious...For those that use the "view/edit budget" option, won't the individual budget category (ie Budget:Elders, etc) be in the negative on the I/E report since there can be no transfers to the category w/o skewing the budget report? So I presume if you use the View/Edit Budget, then those categories will have to remain negative until the end of the year, right? Is this how the budget report always worked?
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aebrown
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#23

Post by aebrown »

ralitaco wrote:Just curious...For those that use the "view/edit budget" option, won't the individual budget category (ie Budget:Elders, etc) be in the negative on the I/E report since there can be no transfers to the category w/o skewing the budget report? So I presume if you use the View/Edit Budget, then those categories will have to remain negative until the end of the year, right? Is this how the budget report always worked?
Yes, the I/E report will show negative balances for budget subcategories if you write checks from those categories, but never transfer any money in. If you use the View/Edit Budget approach (which implies no transfers into subcategories), the I/E report will indeed show negative budget balances forever. That's how things have worked since the CUBS transition. Prior to CUBS, the I/E report always had balances of 0 for budget categories and subcategories, since every check written was automatically instantaneously reimbursed by a corresponding transfer.
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crislapi
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#24

Post by crislapi »

aebrown wrote:If you use the View/Edit Budget approach (which implies no transfers into subcategories), the I/E report will indeed show negative budget balances forever.
I plan on using the View/Edit Budget report. To prevent the categories from being forever negative (and the Budget:Budget Allocations ridiculously positive), at the end of each year I plan on transferring from Budget:Budget Allocations to each category and amount equal to its total expenses for the year, thereby zeroing it out. This way, each category starts each year with $0 expenses, and the Budget:Budget Allocations will only show the funds available for the current year.
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ckmcdonald
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#25

Post by ckmcdonald »

There as been some anticipation as to when the Q1 allotment money would drop. I just got back from the clerks office and in our ward the money has dropped, it appears to have happened on the 6th - at least the entry in the I/E report is dated the 6th. The amount was identical to that projected in the memo that was sent out a week or two ago.
lajackson
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#26

Post by lajackson »

ckmcdonald wrote:The amount was identical to that projected in the memo that was sent out a week or two ago.

Most of our amounts did not match. We received an allocation for eight units, and we can only identify two of them that are at the amount we expected and that was projected in the memo. The rest were for amounts considerably lower than expected.

And other than the two that match, we have no idea which allocation is for which ward. Will are hoping that there will be more information other than a group of anonymous Q1 2011 entries in the I/E report. But it did not come down the line today, the 8th.
lajackson
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#27

Post by lajackson »

lajackson wrote:Most of our amounts did not match.

And other than the two that match, we have no idea which allocation is for which ward.
We visited a branch today and saw the amount they were allocated. We were able to match the transaction by the number assigned to the transfer.

The amount the branch received does not match the amount the stake was told they were going to be sent. The amount they received does not match the amount the stake was told they were actually sent.

We now are looking at three different numbers for this branch and its 1Q 2011 budget allocation. We are at somewhat of a loss in deciding how to plan for the financial future of our stake.
ralitaco
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#28

Post by ralitaco »

ralitaco wrote:This is EXACTLY what I was thinking.
And after reading the rest of the thread, this is what I plan to do UNLESS I am told it is prohibitted.
Well according to the email I got about MLS 3.3.1, what I described IS prohibitted.
the irony is that when I did my send/receive where I got the email, I had just completed my transfers.

Oh well, I can easily change it back. I am looking forward to seeing how the budget will work in 3.3.1.
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ffrsqpilot
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#29

Post by ffrsqpilot »

ralitaco wrote:Oh well, I can easily change it back. I am looking forward to seeing how the budget will work in 3.3.1.

Our stake computer received the message yesterday also. I tried "retransferring" what I did back a week ago and I've ended up with a total mess. The I/E Summary is right but when looking at Summary by sub-category or summary by detail I have what can only be described as a Holy mess! Not sure how undoing what I did before messed everything up but it did. I will be interested to hear how others fare if they did the budget by transfer method.

Sure wish LUS had been a bit more definitive on how to set up our budgets. Earlier would have been a whole lot better than waiting until mid month when most of us have already tried to setting up our budgets.
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aebrown
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#30

Post by aebrown »

FFRsqpilot wrote:Our stake computer received the message yesterday also. I tried "retransferring" what I did back a week ago and I've ended up with a total mess. The I/E Summary is right but when looking at Summary by sub-category or summary by detail I have what can only be described as a Holy mess! Not sure how undoing what I did before messed everything up but it did. I will be interested to hear how others fare if they did the budget by transfer method.

When you undo a transfer, it's important that you use the same transaction date, as well as the exact same categories (but in reverse order).
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
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