Budget pie chart and totals are incorrect

[jdeleon9]

Hi there,

I don’t know if anyone else has this problem, but on the budgets page in the finance section of LCR, the pie chart and the totals don’t seem to be correct. In our case, the “available funds” total isn’t the actual available funds, but rather the available funds added to the budget total. I feel like that’s an easy fix (just make it show the available funds, instead of having it show available funds plus the budget total), but I don’t really know what all goes on behind fixing something like that. I tried both global services department and the feedback tab. They told me nothing is wrong with the page, but I think there is. Is anyone else experiencing this? Am I understanding the page wrong?

[eblood66]

As far as I can tell, the numbers are correct for my stake.

Note that none of the numbers below are not our actual numbers. I just made them up for illustration purposes but our actual numbers add up the same way these ones do.

On the first page it says

Budget Balance as of Jul 03, 2023 $3000 of $8000

On the 2nd page (Prepare Annual Budgets page) is says

Annual Budget Actual/Estimated $9000
Budget Assigned By Unit $8000
Available to Assign $1000

The 'of $8000' on the first page matches the 'Budget Assigned by Unit $8000' on the second page.

If I add up all the expenses and transfers on the first page, it comes to $5000. So the '$3000' on the first page is the total assigned budget less the sum of the expenses and transfers (i.e. $8000 - $5000 = $3000).

So are far as I can tell, the first number on the first page (the one in big bold numbers) is the amount of the allocated budget that hasn't been spent and the second number (which is smaller and underneath) is the total allocated budget.

The 'Available to Assign' amount on the second page does not affect the numbers on the first page.

Do your numbers not match up that way?

[jdeleon9]

Hey thanks for the response. Unfortunately, our numbers do not match up that way. And I forgot to mention this before, but our pie chart says that 0% was spent of our budget. Here are example numbers that illustrate the problem we have:

Budget Balance as of Jul 04 2023: $2000 of $1500

On second page it shows:
Annual Budget Actual/Estimated $3500
Budget Assigned By Unit $1500
Available to Assign $2000

The problem is, in this case, that our actual budget balance is $500, when you go to income and expense details and filter for budget items on the overview tab. So for some reason our total budget that we assigned to different auxiliaries ($1500) is added to our budget balance ($500) to get $2000, which shows up as our budget balance and available to assign numbers incorrectly, I think.

[eblood66]

Hey thanks for the response. Unfortunately, our numbers do not match up that way. And I forgot to mention this before, but our pie chart says that 0% was spent of our budget. Here are example numbers that illustrate the problem we have:

Budget Balance as of Jul 04 2023: $2000 of $1500

On second page it shows:
Annual Budget Actual/Estimated $3500
Budget Assigned By Unit $1500
Available to Assign $2000

The problem is, in this case, that our actual budget balance is $500, when you go to income and expense details and filter for budget items on the overview tab. So for some reason our total budget that we assigned to different auxiliaries ($1500) is added to our budget balance ($500) to get $2000, which shows up as our budget balance and available to assign numbers incorrectly, I think.

The income and expense details page can include items that aren't actually part of the budget per-se. In our case the income/expense details shows that we spent several thousand dollars more than we have because it includes the amount of excess budget that we transferred to headquarters at the beginning of the year. It also includes your quarterly budget allowance that you've received so far. But it doesn't take into account the quarterly amounts you haven't yet received.

Basically, comparing the numbers in the income/expense details to the numbers on the budget screen has to be done very carefully and requires excluding certain entries and then taking into account estimated future entries. It's tricky. Overall, it isn't a useful report for managing your budget and most of the time it's best just to ignore it.

What you do want to do is add up all of the numbers in the income, expense and transfers columns of your Budget Summary tab on the Budget section. I would guess that when you add those up, you'll find that you have income (or positive transfers) which add up to $500 more than your expenses and negative transfers. Presumably the income would be from camp payments or maybe a transfer from the stake that perhaps didn't go into the Budget Allocations category like it should have.

Are you a stake/district or a ward/branch? If you're at the ward/branch level, have you asked your stake finance clerk to look at your budget numbers? He can view all your details himself and may be able to resolve why there appears to be a discrepancy.