Budget Annually or Quarterly (Ward Auxiliaries)

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
User avatar
ckmcdonald
Member
Posts: 204
Joined: Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:33 pm
Location: Middleton, ID, USA (near Boise)

Budget Annually or Quarterly (Ward Auxiliaries)

#1

Post by ckmcdonald »

Historically, the ward funding has been (and remains) quarterly, but (right/wrong, common, uncommon) our ward has budgeted yearly with the ward auxiliaries.

It seemed MLS is designed to operate this way; quarterly funding from the Stake and yearly budgeting with the auxiliaries. Is this the intent and did anything change as a result of CUBS? Can a Ward budget with the auxiliaries quarterly if they wish?

I ask because some of the updates that came with CUBS have prompted me to wonder if it is the intent that Wards now budget quarterly with the auxiliaries.
User avatar
aebrown
Community Administrator
Posts: 15153
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:48 pm
Location: Draper, Utah

#2

Post by aebrown »

ckmcdonald wrote:Historically, the ward funding has been (and remains) quarterly, but (right/wrong, common, uncommon) our ward has budgeted yearly with the ward auxiliaries.

It seemed MLS is designed to operate this way; quarterly funding from the Stake and yearly budgeting with the auxiliaries. Is this the intent and did anything change as a result of CUBS? Can a Ward budget with the auxiliaries quarterly if they wish?

I ask because some of the updates that came with CUBS have prompted me to wonder if it is the intent that Wards now budget quarterly with the auxiliaries.
You definitely want to do budgeting on an annual basis. The Handbook still requires that, and the View/Edit Budget screen works best if you enter annual figures. It will work even better with MLS 3.3.1, so in preparation for the changes to the Budget Report coming in MLS 3.3.1, I would strongly recommend that you enter annual figures for your budget. Yes, that is always a bit of an estimate, since the actual allocations come in quarterly, but MLS 3.3.1 will provide new tools for helping you with that process. If you do anything other than enter annual figures, you'll regret it when MLS 3.3.1 comes out.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
User avatar
johnshaw
Senior Member
Posts: 2273
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:55 pm
Location: Syracuse, UT

#3

Post by johnshaw »

As a comment, when I phoned local unit support with Budgeting questions and what to do this year for my stake, I received the information that the team behind the financing piece of MLS were planning on units budgeting on a quarterly basis. Which was why the Budget Report wasn't a priority. Though I'm not sure whether that is an explanation that was assumed from the result or not, I was told that the team would be fixing the issues with MLS 3.3.1.
nutterb
Member
Posts: 276
Joined: Tue Feb 10, 2009 7:06 am
Location: Berea, KY, USA

#4

Post by nutterb »

So far, I've compromised. I use the View/Edit budget to enter the first quarter allocations, and when I get the second quarter allocations, I'll return to the View/Edit Budget school to reallocate the cumulative total.

But to be honest, I'd rather do it on an annual basis. I've chosen to do it on a quarterly basis because I have some serious concerns that our attendance will be dropping this year, and I don't want to promise annual allocations to the auxiliaries and then not receive enough funds to make good on those promises. Instead, they've all been given a memo of what we anticipate their annual budget to be, but that it may be adjusted up or down throughout the year.

This comes with some complications, such as the percentages on the budget report being a reflection on spending from the first of the year to the current time period, and not a reflection of ones annual budget. It also seems to be unpopular among the auxiliaries, but they agree to live with it when given my explanation. So, coming from someone who is budgeting on a quarterly basis, I don't recommend it.
User avatar
wrigjef
Senior Member
Posts: 631
Joined: Sun Mar 01, 2009 8:38 am
Location: Chesapeake, Virginia

#5

Post by wrigjef »

We just had to issue checks to units for 1st quarter (numbers not entered in stake system by deadline). Our instruction to wards was to take the amount of the 1st quarter allocation (calculated based on 2010 3rd qtr reports) and mulitiply it by 4 to get an estimated annual allocation to plug into the view/edit budget screen.
pbhanney
Member
Posts: 51
Joined: Sun May 22, 2011 7:07 pm
Location: Lehi, Utah, USA

#6

Post by pbhanney »

Wow, "you'll regret it" seems pretty ominous. However, I just changed my budgets from quarterly transfers to a yearly budget. Thanks for the advice.
jwnice
New Member
Posts: 23
Joined: Thu May 08, 2008 9:48 pm
Location: US, Sandy, Oregon

#7

Post by jwnice »

Because they are supposedly "making changes" for how the Budget category will work, at present we are using an Open Org spread sheet to keep track of expenses, and will wait for the revised version to make budget allotments. Right now if you printed a budget report, you would see a couple of organizations with a negative balance.
User avatar
aebrown
Community Administrator
Posts: 15153
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 8:48 pm
Location: Draper, Utah

#8

Post by aebrown »

jwnice wrote:Because they are supposedly "making changes" for how the Budget category will work, at present we are using an Open Org spread sheet to keep track of expenses, and will wait for the revised version to make budget allotments. Right now if you printed a budget report, you would see a couple of organizations with a negative balance.
You're certainly welcome to do that. But it's pretty easy to just enter the budget numbers for 2011 in View/Edit Budget. If you take a couple of minutes to do that, then the budget reports will look reasonable right now. I don't see any reason to wait for 3.3.1 to do this, and copying information to a separate spreadsheet seems like more work than is necessary.
Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.
idjeeper2
Member
Posts: 162
Joined: Wed Jun 09, 2010 10:39 pm
Location: Boise, Idaho, USA

#9

Post by idjeeper2 »

I might be putting this in the wrong place. The budget process has me pretty confused. We entered our budget numbers for each organization in the Budget Allocation worksheet. That is pretty straightforward. However, there does not appear to be any connection between the Budget numbers and Income and Expenses. On the I and E report, we show our first quarter allocation as a transfer. As the organizations spend, their categories show increasingly negative balances. The bottom line total will balance out, but I don't really see a means for reporting the status of an organization's budget as we progress through the year - unless we keep a separate spreadsheet to track that or just do some pencil and paper reports. Am I missing a step? or is this fixed with 3.3.1?
russellhltn
Community Administrator
Posts: 34422
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:53 pm
Location: U.S.

#10

Post by russellhltn »

idjeeper2 wrote:However, there does not appear to be any connection between the Budget numbers and Income and Expenses.

I don't think there is any. "Budget" is neither a deposit, withdrawal, nor the movement of real money. It's an assigned number, a limit.

Have you looked at the Budget reports? I think that's what you're looking for.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
Post Reply

Return to “Local Unit Finance”