ralitaco wrote:(Please keep responses directed to the Ward level)
These are good questions you ask. The questions and answers for this particular topic are almost exactly the same for the ward and stake levels.
First of all, it is Church policy that each unit of the Church should create an annual budget. This has always required some estimating (either at the ward level or stake level or both), since it is not known in December what all 4 quarters of allocation will be. But nonetheless, the unit leader works with the organizations and determines the annual budget.
ralitaco wrote:I have read on various threads that there are 2 ways to "put" money into the auxillary's budget categories.
One is to transfer funds from Budget:Allocation
The other is to use the View/Edit Budget (not sure if that is the exact name)
Can someone provide a pros and cons list of each way?
The basic issue is if you want to use the Budget Report or the Income and Expense Report for tracking budget usage.
If you use the Budget Report, then you would use the View/Edit Budget screen to assign an annual budget to each organization. I see these benefits:
- The Budget Report shows a percentage of budget remaining, which is a useful piece of information.
- If budgets are adjusted during the year, you don't have to create actual transactions -- you just adjust the assigned budget.
- This method is closer to what clerks are used to from the pre-CUBS days.
... and these cons:
- This doesn't seem to be the recommended method.
- The Unit Financial Statement will not show remaining balances per subcategory.
- At the end of the year, you'll still have to transfer budget into each subcategory so that it will have a reasonable balance (zero, or carry forward the remaining balance) for the new year.
If you use the Income and Expense Report, then you would create transfers from Budget:Budget Allocations into the Budget subcategory for each organization. I see these benefits:
- The remaining balance for each organization accurately reflects just how much money really does remain at that point in the year.
- You can use the I & E report for all categories -- you don't have to give Budget special treatment.
... and these cons:
- The Budget Report becomes essentially useless if you also use the View/Edit Budget screen, since allocations will be double counted. But if you don't enter allocations in the View/Edit Budget screen, you'll get odd percentages in the Budget Report. So you probably need to just forget about the Budget Report.
- You have to enter a lot of transfers every quarter.
I'm sure there are other pros and cons, but these are some that come to mind at this point.
ralitaco wrote:From what I have read in the latest training doc under the heading "Issue: How do I allocate the budget?" it says "the unit can then create transfers..."
So I am presuming that is the preferred method.
If that is the case, then the transfers would have to be made quarterly, correct?
I could see two ways of doing this: one annual and one quarterly.
The quarterly method seems to make more sense: As you receive an allocation from the stake, you would create a transfer for each organization for one fourth of their annual budget. It would go from Budget:Budget Allocations to Budget:Primary or Budget:Young Men, or whatever.
But another possibility is to transfer the entire annual budget to each organization at the beginning of the year. This would be odd, in that it would create a negative balance in Budget:Budget Allocations which would last until October 1 when the last installment of the Budget Allocation arrives. But it would give the organizations a better picture of where they stand on their budget use throughout the year, if they are working off of an Income and Expense Report. I don't think I prefer this method, but it might work for some wards, so I thought I'd mention it.