Fund accounting and Jobs (again)

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Posted on by Atahualpa

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So, I'm trying to set up BC to do fund accounting, without resorting to a third party app. My initial thought was to use Jobs to keep the running balances for each fund. However, the difficulty there is that Jobs only allow one "customer" or funding source per job (which seems strange since lots of projects out in the wild have multiple funding sources). Our nonprofit has many distinct donors per fund/project. A friend suggested that maybe the problem could be solved if we didn't think of our donors as "customers" but rather categorized them as "vendors." Thus we would have normal vendors that we pay, but also "vendors" (donors) to whom we make negative payments (in other words, from whom we receive money). In this way, we could have money flowing from the Job to multiple normal vendors, but also money flowing into the Job from multiple "vendor/donors" as negative purchases.

What kind of problems might that create in our posting groups and chart of accounts if we had no "customers" but only "vendors"?

Too convoluted to work smoothly?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

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Bilal Haider 414 on at

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Hi,

If you only use vendors then in Balance Sheet of chart of accounts you will only have Accounts Payables and no Accounts Receivables.

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Atahualpa 113 on at

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Thanks, Bilal. Good point. As a nonprofit we have "pledges" for future donations but no real accounts receivables. It would be helpful to use AR for keeping up with pledges, but maybe not necessary.

But surely there is a better way to do fund accounting in BC.

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Community Member on at

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Hello,

Adding to what Bilal replied... The jobs method is the one I’ve discussed most with a colleagues. On top of the job I would setup a dimension called Fund and assign it to the job, plus all the others you need. PO’s and PI’s can be assigned at line level to the job. All dimensions from the job will follow on. You can perform postings to the g/l with the job g/l journal. If you only want postings on the job just use the job journal. WIP may not be applicable and you can ignore if so. Job dimension is purely for using the standard reporting tools for g/l transactions. Account schedules and analysis views can then show you financial transaction detail about the job. If you only intend to post job journals then my comment can be ignored.

Yes, you can use an APP:

1. Tangicloud Fundamentals - tangicloud.com/.../

2. BroadPoint N-F-P - www.broadpoint.net/.../dynamics-365-business-central-fund-accounting

Hope this all helps.

Thanks,

Steve

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Atahualpa 113 on at

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Steve, I greatly appreciate your taking the time to respond! You've been very kind to try to help me several times.

Please pardon my obtuse questions, but let me see if I am understanding you:

Each fund would be identified with a specific Job

In addition to identifying each fund with a particular Job, we would also set up a dimension in which each value in that dimension tags one of those particular funds

we can post all PO's and PI's to the job and from there to the G/L

incoming donations from various sources (i.e., different donors), but which are all designated for the same particular fund, would all be classed together and show up on a job line as a payment from the same "customer" (and can also be posted to the G/L from the Job journal). Nevertheless, both donations and purchases would also be individually tagged with the pertinent dimension value enabling us to keep a running "balance" on the fund

The dimension tag on a particular donation would also allow us to run a report which would include the identity of the donor with the donation

Thus, the Jobs functionality primarily gives us the benefit of budgeting for the fund/project, while dimensions is what actually allows us to keep track of donations received into and expenses paid from the fund.

If I have that right, then my remaining question is: how might we get a beginning balance for the fund?

Thanks for being so generous with your time, and thanks in advance for any further help you can give.

cheers,

Wes Baker

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Jason Nicolaou @ Si... 120 on at

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Wes based on what you described there is one critical piece missing and that is the reporting piece. Steve mentioned the account schedules with particular views. Another route would be to consider using PowerBI. This way alerts could be set up inside of PowerBI to alert you when you hit thresholds. An example would be when purchases with fund dimension A hit $40,000 or more, notify these people. The $40,000 represents the budget for that project and/or the threshold where you need to start watching much closer as not to exceed the total budget that is usually created by directed funds. Tangicloud adds much of this with their app. Please share what you implement as this is an interesting one. Best of luck!

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Atahualpa 113 on at

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Thanks, Jason! I will update with what we figure out. Three things for us are of supreme importance:

Individual "fund managers" need to keep up with specific donations to the fund (so they can properly thank donors, for example)

they need to monitor expenses paid from the fund (to make sure that monies are spent according to budget and donor wishes)

they need to monitor the fund balance (to make sure the fund does not go negative).

Some ERPs for nonprofits (like Financial Edge from Blackbaud) do this through project functionality. The problem (I've learned) is that Jobs can't do this by itself because a job can only have one "customer" or revenue source. Jobs will help us keep up with the details of expenses paid from the fund (#2), but not with donations made into the fund (#1). I suppose the budget part of Jobs would be where we could record the fund's beginning and ongoing balance (#3), but I'm not clear yet on exactly how that would work.

It sounds reasonable to use dimensions to keep up with specific donations into the fund, but as you indicated, integrating info on specific donations with expenses (and generating a fund balance) for reporting isn't so obvious. I like your suggestion, however, that we use Power BI. That sounds very promising.

Thanks. This has given me much to think about! I'd certainly be grateful for any more advice from you or others on how best to skin this cat!

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Community Member on at

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Wes,

You hit the nail on the head and all correct. As for beginning balance, If the Fund Balance is already in GL, just post to the Job Journal to record the opening balance that matches the GL.

Thanks,

Steve

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