How to complete the Methodist Church Standard Form of Accounts

This article is to help Methodist Churches wanting to use the Methodist Church Standard Form of Accounts.

Here is an example of the Methodist Church Standing Form Template . For the latest template, please contact the Methodist Church Central Finance Board.

For all other churches and charities creating receipts and payments accounts please see this separate article about how to create receipts and payments accounts using the simpler Charities Commission template.

Setting up Category Connectors to match the Methodist Classifications

Category Connectors are typically used to enable easy extraction of data for the Methodist Church Standard Form of Accounts Template.

This enables you to structure your funds/categories however you wish to do so for internal financial reporting AND be able to get the data you need for end-of-year reporting.

Step 1: Category Connector Setup

Go to the Category Connector Settings screen (within Settings) to set up your category connectors.

Set up your category connectors to mirror the classifications on the Methodist Church Accounts Template.

Here is the methodist classification you need:

And this is how you should set up your category connectors to match these:

Step 2: Linking Categories to Category Connectors

Once you've set up your category connectors, you then need to ensure each category you have created is given a methodist church classification, by ensuring each is linked to the relevant category connector.

You do this within the Category Settings Screen, by going to the 'Category Connectors' view.

And in the popup that appears, select the relevant category connector

As soon as a category is linked to a category connector it will be hidden.

Just untick the 'hide' checkbox at the top of the screen if you wish to unhide already connected categories.

Once all the categories in your General Fund are linked, you will need to do the same for other funds. You can change the fund at the top of the screen within the fund dropdown to do this.

Viewing Income & Expenditure by Methodist Classifications

Once all of your categories have been linked to a category connector you can use the Income & Expenditure Summary (by Category Connector) Report to get the breakdown needed for the Methodist Church Standard Form of Accounts Template.

Simply select the 'by fund view' at the top of this report (you may also wish to 'hide projections').

The data from this report can be copied straight into the template form:

You will be able to find the information required by the template from your bank statements and within your financial reports within ExpensePlus.

For more help and guidance on completing the Methodist Church Standard Form of Accounts, please contact the Methodist Church Central Finance Board.

To better understand the Finance Reports module, please view the module overview video here.