Quicken for Departments with income and expenses

Unknown

I am looking to set up a church account, where we have multiple departments providing income and expenses for an annual church event.  At the end, we will look to provide a report with the net income from each department.  Can this be done with quicken deluxe?

NotACPA

Look into using Tags to identify each department.  With a Tag added to the category of each transaction, then a report subtotaled by Tag will handle what you want.

Unknown

Use a tag to delineate each department income and expense category.

Then create a report sorted by tags. 

Unknown

Look into using Tags to identify each department.  With a Tag added to the category of each transaction, then a report subtotaled by Tag will handle what you want.

Can you provide an example (link) to visualize the concept.  Having a hard time understanding the hierarchy and structure.

The largest department will be food.  This will have income for purchasing the food (finished product) and the expense in making the finished product.  Do I create this department as in income when creating categories?

Thank you in advance.

NotACPA

Look into using Tags to identify each department.  With a Tag added to the category of each transaction, then a report subtotaled by Tag will handle what you want.

First create your Asset and any Liability accounts.   Checking would be an asset.

Then, create you Income and Expense categories.  Contributions are income and Salaries are expenses.  Someone on your Board, or Audit, committee can help to define the Categories.

Lastly, define the Tags, which will represent the Departments.  So a contribution for food would have a Category of "Contribution/Food".

Departments, in this Scheme are NOT, in and of themselves, Income.  Rather "Contribution" is the income item and "/Food" indicates what the Contribution was for.


See Q Help for how to use Tags.

Tom Young

I might opt for Categories, SubCategories, SubSubCategories,etc. as opposed to Tags, but it would be easier to make a specific recommendation with a better understanding or your actual needs.

Categories and Tags are simply a method used to "earmark" transactions in a way that's useful and makes sense to you.  Quicken can run reports filtered by these Categories/SubCategories and Tags so the direct answer to your direct question about reports is a qualified "Yes".  Quicken can certainly tell you the income and expenses and net of each department, easily.  But Quicken's reporting system is not wildly flexible and customizable so you may have to take export Quicken's reports into Excel to get the exact presentation you seek.

Unknown

Look into using Tags to identify each department.  With a Tag added to the category of each transaction, then a report subtotaled by Tag will handle what you want.

First, thank you for taking the time to respond and appreciate your feedback.

The church in the past has been using the departments (categories) in an excel file to show both the expenses (buying the food materials), income (revenue from selling the food) and the net profit from the two, three columns.  This does not match up with the definition above.  

Currently we have Food, Bar, Gift Shop that provide us income (sales from revenue) and expenses to buy materials.  Can we set up quicken similar to the excel format or do I need to change format and reporting moving forward?  Ideally, I wish to keep in the old format to provide comparisons from prior years.

As you can see I am a newbie to Quicken and accounting terms.

John

Tom Young

Look into using Tags to identify each department.  With a Tag added to the category of each transaction, then a report subtotaled by Tag will handle what you want.

In Quicken-speak an "Account" is an asset or liability that shows up on a Balance Sheet.  A checking account is an asset.  A mortgage loan is a liability.

In Quicken-speak a "Category" is a type of revenue or expense that would show up on a Profit and Loss or Income and Revenue statement.  So "Cost of Food" is a form of expense while "Food Sales" is a type of revenue.

Accordingly the "three columns" in your Excel report would represent two "Categories", (e.g., "Cost of Food" and "Food Sales") in the first two columns and the difference between the two representing the profit or loss in the last column.


Quicken requires that any accounting entry you make has to be made in an Account.  So the first thing you have to do in order to use Quicken is to establish any relevant asset or liability Accounts in Quicken.  Without at least one Account established in Quicken you simply can't make any accounting entries.

Assuming for the moment that the only relevant asset here is a church checking account - "Checking at Too Big to Fail Bank" - that would be the Account that you would first need to establish in Quicken.

The purchase of food would be recorded in the Too Big to Fail checking Account as a reduction in cash in bank with an offsetting increase to an expense Category "Cost of Food."  Later when the proceeds from the sale were deposited into the Too Big to Fail checking Account that would be recorded as an increase in cash in bank with an offsetting increase to a revenue/income Category "Food Sales."  You could then run a report that would look something like:

Food Sales      $XXX.XX
Cost of Food    $XXX.XX
                        -----------
Overall             $XXX.XX
                        =======

Both "SubCategories" or "Tags" could be used to "refine" the accounting.  Right now the above report makes no distinction among the various departments you want to track so either adding a SubCategories of " Food", "Bar", "Gift Shop" to each of the two Categories would work to make the distinction, or adding a Tag of "Food", "Bar", "Gift Shop" each time you made an entry would also work.

(My preference for SubCategories as opposed to Tags is due to how the program itself relates to the two different earmarks.  SubCategories must absolutely be established for each main Category in order to use them and anytime you make an entry the Category - Subcategories are clearly presented for selection.  Tags on the other hand really aren't well controlled by the program.  You don't need to "tie" a Tag to any particular Category and they aren't presented when you make an accounting entry, you have to remember to use them.)

I would think there would be someone in the church that does have the accounting experience needed to help you get started.

Unknown

Appreciate the feedback and I was able to set up the categories and created a cash flow report.  I am assuming quicken will not provide a side be side column report, allowing to show the income and expense for each category, followed by a third column with the net profit? Looks like I will need to export and manipulate into excel.

Thanks again.

John