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How do I handle separate funds within a single savings account?

Moondoggy_1

I've been asked to take over the treasury responsibilities for the church I attend and its mainly managing the checkbook but the church has a situation that I'm unsure of how to handle.

The church has one checking account and one savings account. Within the savings account there are general finds set aside for an unexpected expense such as paying a deductible expense if the church sustains damage due to a hurricane. Also within that savings account are memorial gift funds specifically set aside at the request of a surviving family member for a special need (i.e. the Memorial Stained Glass Fund). My question has to do with how you manage all of these separate funds within a single savings account so that:

1. At the end of the month during reconciliation your account balance in your Quicken account matches the balance shown on the bank statement and;
2. You have some means of generating a report showing the balances within each fund where the combined grand total also matches the balance shown on the bank statement.

Any help would be appreciated as the former treasurer passed away and the church council wants to use Quicken instead of hand written notes on how much is in what fund. We will basically be creating a new Quicken file and using her notes and the bank statements from 2020 to create the needed transactions so it would be helpful if I could get this done correctly up front. Some of these memorial funds previously existed in 2019 while some new memorial funds have been added in 2020. In addition, some money in what I'll refer to as the "Rainy Day General Fund" have been transferred to the checking account to pay for replacement of an air conditioning unit so I have a number of different transactions to deal with.

Thanks in advance for any help.

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Comments

volvogirl

Sounds like you could use Savings goals. Search for that. Sorry, I don't know much about them.

splasher

Agree, Savings Goals will handle your situation. They keep all of the funds in the Savings account for reconciling, but provide a means of seeing how much is in a specific "sub-fund", where it came from and where it went.

Setup up a test FILE with a test savings account and a couple of Savings Goals to see how it works.

Moondoggy_1

I did a bit of reading and savings goals appears to answer how to segregate the money within the saving account but from what I read it reduces to amount shown in the register by the amount placed in the saving goal. If that's the case how do you reconcile the savings account with the bank statement? There was something said about turning on a setting that would show the savings goal balances but I'm not sure this will do the trick. Is this how you to it or is there a different way or does reconciliation automatically handle this so you can leave the money set aside hidden?

UKR

Assuming that you are using the Quicken Deluxe (or higher) edition ... (AFAIK, this feature is not available in the Starter Edition)

Instead of Savings Goals I'd rather use Tags to earmark each transaction going into or out of the Savings Account, e.g., "Hurricane Savings", "Memorial Fund", etc.

Reports by Tag show you how much you have in each savings fund.

And this does not change how you reconcile your accounts with the bank statements at all.

splasher

Moondoggy_1 said:

I did a bit of reading and savings goals appears to answer how to segregate the money within the saving account but from what I read it reduces to amount shown in the register by the amount placed in the saving goal. If that's the case how do you reconcile the savings account with the bank statement? There was something said about turning on a setting that would show the savings goal balances but I'm not sure this will do the trick. Is this how you to it or is there a different way or does reconciliation automatically handle this so you can leave the money set aside hidden?

While it appears that the funds are not in the Savings account, when it comes time to reconcile, it is as if the Savings Goals transactions did not exist.
As suggested, test it in a test file, you will see how it works.

Moondoggy_1

Thanks Everyone. I've tried both ways and each has it's own advantage. If I do it by goal the money assigned to the goal doesn't short up in the account balance however it does show up on the reconciliation report. The advantage to the goal method is that if you are trying to reach a goal this shows your progress toward the goal.

The Tag method was a bit confusing as you must put a forward slash after the category and then add the tag but tags don't show up on a list to select from you have to start entering the tag name and it then auto fills the rest of the tag name. I initially had a few problems getting a report that would show the balance of the tagged amounts but I finally figured it out. It would have been much nicer if tags were a separate field like the category field

At this point I'm going to have to see what method the church council wants to use as both methods will work depending on the viewpoint they wish to see.

If anyone has any more suggestions, let me know.

UKR

Moondoggy_1 said:

...

The Tag method was a bit confusing as you must put a forward slash after the category and then add the tag but tags don't show up on a list to select from you have to start entering the tag name and it then auto fills the rest of the tag name. I initially had a few problems getting a report that would show the balance of the tagged amounts but I finally figured it out. It would have been much nicer if tags were a separate field like the category field

...

Unless you're using a very old Quicken version, there's a separate Tag field available in each register.
If it doesn't show in your registers, simply add it. Click the Register columns gear icon (1), then (2) click to put a checkmark into the box at the Tag field in the popup.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/rl/42hy7x7buhpa.png

Repeat for each register.

Moondoggy_1

Thanks for telling me how to turn on the tags. I just didn't know where to turn it on.

I now have two test files - one for tags and one for goals. After experimenting with the goals file I'm thinking that this might be the better solution of two. Some members of the church have expressed concern over the fact that the savings account contains general funds and special funds and that the special funds might get used for general needs as opposed to their intended purpose. The fact that the account list on the left of the screen shows the savings account with only the available general funds and it also shows the fund balances will help satisfy the concerns of these folks as many of them wanted a separate savings account for each fund and the goals method satisfies that concern. The fact that the reconciliation report will correctly balance to the bank statement handles the rest.

Thanks everyone.

GeoffG

You might consider a third alternative and see if you can can do both at the same time, savings goal and tags. Invariably when presented with one option or another, someone will ask for both.

Since you have two test files, it should be easy to see how the combined option works. Personally, I use and advocate savings goal for single account - multipurpose use.

Moondoggy_1

Good Point. Thanks.