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Volunteer Treasurer
November 29, 2020
Solved

Tracking Multiple Funds within one Bank account

  • November 29, 2020
  • 1 reply
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Hello,

 

Our church needs to track multiple funds within one bank account. I can see multiple ways to do this, and I'd like some advice on which way is best. 

 

The funds we're tracking include money held in reserve for an employee that will be paid at a later date. Another fund is money earmarked by our Board to give to people who request help with travel costs to attend events and services. Both these funds decrease periodically as money is paid out. They increase annually when the Board earmarks more money for the travel fund, and monthly in the case of the employee fund. 

So one way to track this would be to create liability accounts for each fund. I like the way this shows up as a liability line on the Balance Sheet. This is better than where it's been showing up as a sub-account of the Bank account under Assets. My question about this is if it's legit to take the opening balance for this fund from an equity account. We report all previous years net income and our opening equity on one line, so I can take it from opening equity. QB won't let me use the Retained Earnings or Net Revenue lines in equity to fund the new liability account, that's why I used opening balance equity.

 

The other way to do this would be to use classes, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate here. 

 

As always, thanks in advance for any guidance you can provide. 

Best answer by Charies_M

Good day, Volunteer Treasurer.

 

I'm here to bring clarifications to your concern about ways of handling multiple funds within one bank account. Both methods you've mentioned are acceptable.

 

For your first option which is to create a liability account for each of the funds, you can use the Opening Balance to fund the liability account you created.

 

  1. Go to the Gear icon, then select Chart of Accounts.
  2. Select New to create a new account.
  3. From the Account Type dropdown menu, select the type of account you want to use (Non-current liabilities or Current liabilities).
  4. Fill in the necessary information. Click Save and close.

You can refer to this article for instructions on how to create a liability account in QBO: Add an account to your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online.

 

For your second option, I'm leaving these articles handy to become more familiar with how class tracking works in QBO:

 

You may also want to review the transactions by running reports by class.

 

Be sure to get back to me if you have follow-up questions. I'm always happy to help. Have a good day!

1 reply

C
Charies_MAnswer
November 30, 2020

Good day, Volunteer Treasurer.

 

I'm here to bring clarifications to your concern about ways of handling multiple funds within one bank account. Both methods you've mentioned are acceptable.

 

For your first option which is to create a liability account for each of the funds, you can use the Opening Balance to fund the liability account you created.

 

  1. Go to the Gear icon, then select Chart of Accounts.
  2. Select New to create a new account.
  3. From the Account Type dropdown menu, select the type of account you want to use (Non-current liabilities or Current liabilities).
  4. Fill in the necessary information. Click Save and close.

You can refer to this article for instructions on how to create a liability account in QBO: Add an account to your chart of accounts in QuickBooks Online.

 

For your second option, I'm leaving these articles handy to become more familiar with how class tracking works in QBO:

 

You may also want to review the transactions by running reports by class.

 

Be sure to get back to me if you have follow-up questions. I'm always happy to help. Have a good day!

V
Volunteer TreasurerAuthor
November 30, 2020

Hi Charles_M 

 

Thanks for the clear instructions. That's helpful. I'm still curious to hear from people with more experience that I have about the pros and cons of both methods

    A
    annmarie63
    July 23, 2021

    Hi Volunteer Treasurer

    I am in the same situation basically but in a school setting attempting to manage fund raiser revenue/expenses for various clubs and extracirrular activites.  We have one checking account but within that one checking account we have many clubs with their own funds that I need to track and report separately on.  I am curious as to how you ended up setting up your system and any other tips you may?  Thanks in advance - School Treasurer

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