Update Budget allocation

Discuss questions around local unit policies for budgeting, reconciling, etc. This forum should not contain specific financial or membership information.
cchang
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Update Budget allocation

#1

Post by cchang »

Is there currently a way to update the budget allocation for each auxiliary unit in LCR? I need to adjust the total allocation to accomodate for the rollover from 2018 expense. For example, we budgeted $300 for the EQ but they rolled over an expense of $100 from 2018 into 2019 which overinflates the percentage of 2019 spent since. I can only adjust it in MLS at this time and was wondering if there was a way to do it in LCR to change the allocated budget from $300 to $400 so that their 2019 percentage doesn't go negative on the report.
lajackson
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#2

Post by lajackson »

cchang wrote:I can only adjust it in MLS at this time and was wondering if there was a way to do it in LCR
Not yet, as far as I understand.
drepouille
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#3

Post by drepouille »

No way to do that yet in LCR. Budget categories can go negative as long as the ward budget has an overall positive balance. Your budget categories are for local management only. The stake and the church only care if your ward budget goes negative.

On the other hand, none of your Other:AMFA subcategory balances may ever go negative. You are supposed to collect the funds before you can spend the funds.
Dana Repouille, Plattsmouth, Nebraska
cchang
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#4

Post by cchang »

drepouille wrote:No way to do that yet in LCR. Budget categories can go negative as long as the ward budget has an overall positive balance. Your budget categories are for local management only. The stake and the church only care if your ward budget goes negative.

On the other hand, none of your Other:AMFA subcategory balances may ever go negative. You are supposed to collect the funds before you can spend the funds.
The overall budget doesn't go negative, it is the auxiliary unit's budget that goes negative. I want to provide a budget update for each auxiliary unit but with the 2018 rollover expense, it looks like the auxiliary unit has already overspent what we allocated for them. For example, we budgeted $300 for 2019 but currently they have already spent $350 (which includes $100 from 2018) that we do not want to account for in the 2019 budget report when they've only actually spent $250 so far for 2019.
cchang
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#5

Post by cchang »

lajackson wrote:
cchang wrote:I can only adjust it in MLS at this time and was wondering if there was a way to do it in LCR
Not yet, as far as I understand.
I think this is probably the last remaining item that I still need to log into MLS for only. Is this something that's on the enhancement list to be added to LCR?
eblood66
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#6

Post by eblood66 »

cchang wrote:I think this is probably the last remaining item that I still need to log into MLS for only. Is this something that's on the enhancement list to be added to LCR?
I'm sure it is but we don't know the time table.
russellhltn
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#7

Post by russellhltn »

Instead of upping the budget (which tends to confuse things), what about transferring some funds into their account? I think the "income" will reflect in the budget report so they remain under budget.
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drepouille
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#8

Post by drepouille »

russellhltn wrote:Instead of upping the budget (which tends to confuse things), what about transferring some funds into their account? I think the "income" will reflect in the budget report so they remain under budget.
Good point. Assuming you have allocated your ward's entire estimated budget amount to the various budget categories, if you increased the budget for one category, you would have to decrease it for another category. So why not just transfer funds between categories instead of messing with your budget allocations?

As I said before, the bottom line is that the budget amounts you set at the beginning of the year for each budget category are simply for local (ward) management. Nobody outside of your ward cares if one of your budget categories has a negative balance as long as the overall ward budget is greater than zero.
Dana Repouille, Plattsmouth, Nebraska
drepouille
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#9

Post by drepouille »

It is possible that when MLS goes away, we may only be able to set budget categories at the beginning of the year. Perhaps those who set the requirements for the budget functions believe that we should only set the budget once per year. A budget that changes throughout the year is not a very good management tool. Just guessing, as I know nothing.
Dana Repouille, Plattsmouth, Nebraska
chriswoodut
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Re: Update Budget allocation

#10

Post by chriswoodut »

drepouille wrote:It is possible that when MLS goes away, we may only be able to set budget categories at the beginning of the year. Perhaps those who set the requirements for the budget functions believe that we should only set the budget once per year. A budget that changes throughout the year is not a very good management tool. Just guessing, as I know nothing.
The budget tool is wonky in my opinion. If you're trying to use it to show the organizations how much they still have left to spend, then letting it run negative due to a previous year expense is annoying because they may actually still have dollars to spend from this year's budget. If you're trying to use it to track what they say they're actually going to spend and to keep it consistent year to year, then inflating the budget for 'this year' to accommodate the expense from last year becomes problematic because next year you have to remember that last year's budget was inflated due to the previous years late expense. ha. Keep track of that, right?

As an aside, once I ended up making a change after the start of the year to an expense in the previous year in prep for our audit. This caused MLS to set the date of the expense/change to the date I made the change which then made the expense a CURRENT year expense! Ugh. I now have a rule that I must have everything as clean as possible December 31 and try to avoid any changes afterwards or I get to track oddities throughout the following year.

As another post mentioned, I'm not sure how you 'transfer' income from one budget category to another without changing the allocation numbers since the budget isn't really tied to real dollars and the budget categories really aren't 'accounts'. It's simply a map, right? The income IS the allocation, right?
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