Budgets: How to budget existing money?

[Ronz]

I wonder if someone could tell me the "proper" way of doing this?

We always have a balanced budget for the year: Income = Expenses.

But we actually have some money (assets) from last year that can be budgeted to pay this year's expenses. We could show a deficit budget, but that does not seem right.

I want to know how we can budget last years money for this year's expenses. And produce a report that would show that last year's money is being included in the budget. What is the proper way of doing that?

We construct our budget on a spreadsheet and,of course, its' easy to include a line for last years money that just adds with this year's income. Since last year's money is not income, I don't know how that could be done in PowerChurch.

We show our budget on the consolidated Income/Expense reports. That adds up all of the budgeted accounts in all funds which is what the PowerChurch Budget reports do not do. A complaint that I have had for a while.

PowerChurch's budget reports only total the income and expenses within a fund. We need a grand total of all funds.

Thanks.

Ron Zastovnik
Memorial United Methodist Church, Clovis CA