Alan_Brown wrote:That's a local decision. Personally, I plan to use Budget:Administration for expenses that feel like administration. Expenses related to the Activities committee don't feel like that, but Ward Supplies do. But that's just my opinion.
That will help clear things up a lot since different wards in the stake are using different methods. I think we want to keep it simple so putting it all under Budget Administration may be effective.
I definitely think it is wrong to stop writing checks. When members have put out money and requested reimbursement, it is our responsibility to deliver that reimbursement promptly. If you later decide that a check was written from the wrong subcategory, it's easy enough to change the category.
That's what we decided to do so we are fine. I may bring this up with the other ward's clerk and let them know but it's not my place to decide that for them. We have already been writing checks because of the reasoning you gave. Someone shouldn't have to wait to be reimbursed especially in our ward since its a student ward and those who are being reimbursed are not able to afford to wait.
I can only assume that those categories were created for a purpose. When an expense is obviously related to the Relief Society, I can't see any good reason to use any category other than the built-in Budget:Relief Society category.
That makes a lot of sense so we should probably do the same. The reason I see for the creation of these was that they are the standard organizations and auxiliaries in a ward. Our ward won't be using some of these categories because we are a student ward and don't have a YM, YW, or Primary.
But I think you're going to be disappointed if you're looking for an official policy statement on how to use categories. None has been released at this point, and I really doubt that any will be. Each unit needs to make its best judgment, based on its own situation. I started this thread so that various clerks can share ideas of what works for them. That may give you some ideas.
Thanks. That will make it as simple as the Bishop and Clerks deciding how we want to do it.
Some people thought that money may have been planned to be allocated to those specific categories and we would have to use them. I didn't see that as being possible and it seems that the only category that will receive any money directly is the Budget Allocation.
Is my understanding correct that when we receive a check from the stake that we will deposit it into the Budget Allocation category and transfer from their to the other categories based on our own budget decisions and needs.
I also understand that all future budget allocations will be directly deposited into this category and that we would have to transfer funds from there to the other categories instead of using the regular edit budget feature.
Thanks for all of your help.
You have made things a lot more simple to understand and saved me a lot of time reading through differing opinions. I will of course read more but I won't stress out about it