LDSC: new budget system
Nate
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I used to be ward Executive Secretary but I kept my membership in this group even though I am now in the High Priests Group leadership. We had a meeting yesterday where the new budget program was presented - sort of. There were lots of holes in the presentation and lots of I don't knows. Can someone briefly state how the new system differs from what we have been using for the past how many years. Is the only difference that it is now a quarterly budget and checks will bounce if budgets are exceeded or does High Priests group attendance and home teaching percentage have any effect? Any info would be appreciated as it seems to be limited in our ward. Thanks.
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Alan Brown
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> I used to be ward Executive Secretary but I kept my membership in this group even though I am now in the High Priests Group leadership. We had a meeting yesterday where the new budget program was presented - sort of. There were lots of holes in the presentation and lots of I don't knows. Can someone briefly state how the new system differs from what we have been using for the past how many years. Is the only difference that it is now a quarterly budget and checks will bounce if budgets are exceeded or does High Priests group attendance and home teaching percentage have any effect? Any info would be appreciated as it seems to be limited in our ward. Thanks.
The budget system might not change at all for auxiliaries and quorums,
depending on how your stake and ward choose to work with it. In any
case, checks will not bounce if budgets are exceeded -- that was never
the case, and still is not. I imagine most wards will choose to
transfer 1/4 of the annual budget allocation to each auxiliary each
quarter, which will require some adjustment for auxiliaries and
quorums, who previously most likely were told an annual allocation at
the beginning of the year and didn't have to worry about quarterly
allocations.
Wards are still supposed to create annual budgets to plan expenses for
the year. But then Budget funds are allocated from CHQ on a quarterly
basis, but then again, they always were. The only real difference is
that the budget allocations are now actual transfers of funds and
Budget checks are actual charges against those actual dollars, whereas
they used to be a separate accounting against the zero-based Budget
category.
The method of calculating overall budget allocations has not changed
-- the stake and wards still receive allocations based on Sacrament
Meeting attendance, YM, YW, Primary, and YSA attendance -- HP group
attendance and HT percentage have never had any effect and still
don't. The precise method for suballocating the overall budget funds
to wards within a stake has changed somewhat, but that's a minor
detail.
Alan Brown
Assistant Stake Clerk
Sandy Utah Crescent Stake
Russell Hltn
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> I used to be ward Executive Secretary but I kept my membership in this group even though I am now in the High Priests Group leadership. We had a meeting yesterday where the new budget program was presented - sort of. There were lots of holes in the presentation and lots of I don't knows. Can someone briefly state how the new system differs from what we have been using for the past how many years.
The accounting has changed dramatically. The actual funding - hardly
any at all.
The funding is still primarily from Sacrament Meeting attendance with
some additional funding based on the number of active Primary, Youth
and YSA. The stake takes a "cut" to fund it's programs and passes the
remainder to the wards. The amount of the cut is determined by the
Stake Presidency. The only change in this area is how the YSA number
is calculated. In short, hardly any change at all.
It's in the accounting area that everything has changed. How much it
changes depends on your stake.
Under the old system, the stake assigned a "budget figure" that the
ward had to stay under. The accounting was "magic purse" style where
a check created a debit and when it cleared there was a transfer to
cover it bringing the Budget category back to zero. Now, the ward is
given money each quarter and when you write a check, the amount goes
down. Just like your personal bank account.
The funds are dispersed quarterly - no change there. But in the old
system, the stake could have given a yearly budget and simply absorbed
any discrepancies. But under the new systems the wards are directly
exposed to how CHQ does it. As a result, they will have a greater
uncertainly of what their annual budget is. They also see just how
much the stake is taking.
Under the old system, the stake as a whole kept all unspent funds.
They may or may not have allowed the wards to carry it over. Under
the new system, the wards by default carry over any balances -
positive or negative. If the stake wants that money back, the ward
will have to cut a check.
The biggest area of upheaval is in the categorization of things. In
the conversion, all the budget categories were lumped together causing
a great deal of confusion. Not to mention some bugs with the
conversion that still haven't been completely ironed out.
>>> does High Priests group attendance and home teaching percentage have any effect? <<<
Unless the stake president somehow uses that to decide how how to
allocate funds, it makes no difference whatsoever.