Accounting Budgets

The Budget Screen allows you to create yearly budgets and evaluate the amounts spent or received against your budget.

Creating a New Budget

Once your categories are set up, return to the Budget Screen and select "Actions," then select the "Create Budget" option.

In the following screen, give your budget a name and start date. Then select the categories and subcategories you want to include in this budget.

Once you have verified that all the appropriate categories are highlighted, select the "Create Budget" button. You are done creating a new budget! The following screen will look like this:

Budget Setup

You will notice the new budget initially has $0 budgeted for each category. There are two ways you can setup each item of your new budget.

Detailed Setup

To do a detailed setup for each budget item, select that line of the budget and enter the budget amount and item period in the following window.

You can choose a yearly or monthly item period, or create a custom period for each line item.

"Year" is the default item period and applies the budget amount to the entire year. "Month" applies that amount to each month, and "Period" applies the budget amount to the date range you select.

Quick Setup

To do a quick setup that allows you to quickly enter the amount of each budget item without having to click on each line, select the "Actions" button, then select "Budget Setup."

In this window, you can enter the budget amount, add or remove line items, and change the budget name or start date.

Evaluating Budget vs. Actual

You can evaluate the budget vs. actual amounts by selecting a date from the drop-down list. The time period will begin at the established start date of the budget and end at the date indicated by your selection.

The Income and Expense Category items will reflect the year-to-date budget for the time period selected. Each time you adjust the time period, these amounts will change to reflect the new time period.

Budget Reports

ChurchTrac offers a variety of budget reports. To find them, select the "Actions" button, then select "Budget Reports."

Select the report you need, then select "View Report" for a PDF version, or "Export to CSV" for an editable spreadsheet.

Tips

Editing Categories

The order the categories appear on a budget, as well as whether a Category is designated as an Income or Expense Category can be edited on the Categories Screen.

Cloning a budget

You can clone any budget in ChurchTrac in seconds. Select the budget you wish to clone. Then select the “actions” button and choose clone budget. This means that creating budgets for the following years will be even faster. Yay!

Budget Period

For budget items that only happen on a specific month or time period in your yearly budget, navigate to that month on the budget and select its category. There you have the option to select "Month" or "Period."

Budget Reports

The data in the reports will reflect the time period set on the "Display Budget Through" drop-down selection box at the top of the screen.

Non-Budgeted Items & Examples

Since a Parent Category includes amounts from ALL of its subcategories, there are situations in which you will want to move non-budgeted subcategories to their own Parent Category that are not part of your budget.

Examples of this include employee-shared withholdings such as:

Social Security & Medicare Taxes
Federal withholdings
State & local tax withholdings
Employee retirement contributions

Creating a Church Budget