Entering and Editing Categories and Subcategories

You can access the "Add or Edit Categories" option from the top toolbar of the Contributions, Budget or Accounting screens. Once you have accessed this screen, you can create or edit the financial categories used on all three of these screens.

The category list allows you to specify categories (or funds) to assign to contributions, expenses and budgets. For example, whenever someone gives money to your church, you can assign the contribution to a category, such as "Budget Offering" or "Building Fund" on the contributions screen. When you use the accounting screen to record checks or transactions you can assign one or more categories to each transaction, such as "Office Supplies" or "Telephone."

When entering categories, if a category is a tax-deductible contribution item, make sure the tax deductible box is checked, otherwise uncheck this box. All contributions and pledges that are assigned to a tax-deductible category will appear on Contribution statements, whereas unchecked categories will not.

Note: When entering contributions on the Contributions Screen, you can also specify which contributions are tax deductible and which are not. Tax deductible is the default status on this screen, so you will need to uncheck this box if the contribution is not tax deductible.

According to the IRS, if you receive something in exchange for your contribution, then it is not a tax-deductible contribution (only the amount that is in excess of the value of the contribution is deductible). For example, if you purchase a ticket to a music concert at church, that is not a tax deductible contribution. If you pay for your child to go to camp, that is not tax deductible. If you give money to the youth ministry to help pay for camp, and you receive nothing in exchange for that donation, then it is tax deductible. If the youth have a bake sell and you buy a cookie for $20, then you can only deduct the amount that is in excess of the value of the cookie. If the cookie is valued at $1, then you can deduct $19 as a contribution.

If a category is primarily an inflow category, select "Income", otherwise, select "Expense". Use the arrows at the bottom of the Category List window to move categories into the order you want them to appear in ChurchTrac and on reports. You can also click the blue Ref# or Category Name buttons at the top to instantly sort the list by Reference number or alphabetically by Category name.

In addition to creating categories for contributions, expenses and budgets, ChurchTrac enables you to create more specific subcategories to fall under the broader categories. These subcategories can then be tracked together under the broader category heading on your financial reports. For example, you can create a category entitled "Salaries." You then create other more specific categories such as Pastor’s Salary, Youth Minister Salary, Music Minister Salary, etc. Then you can choose to make these categories subcategories of another category by clicking in the field entitled This category is a subcategory of and selecting "Salaries" from the drop down menu.

To edit or delete any of your categories, just click on the field you want to change and start typing your new information or select delete on your keyboard.

Tracking Category Balances

If you want to track your balances in these categories and/or subcategories, enter the start date that you would like to begin tracking from. You can set your starting date to the beginning of your fiscal year, to the beginning of the month, or some other date. You can then manually enter your starting balance or ChurchTrac will automatically calculate the starting balance and continue to update the current balance based on the entries on the Accounting Screen since the start date you provided.

Tracking your balances can be beneficial because it allows you to see at a glance how much you have in each category. And it also enables you to keep up with how much has been spent (and how much is left) in a specific fund. You can consider this to be an unofficial total of how much has been spent or received in each category.