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.
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 Charity Commission template.
The template that the Methodist Church provides is only for churches creating accounts on a receipts and payments basis and who have their accounting basis set to receipts and payments in ExpensePlus.
Setting up category connectors to match the Methodist Classifications
In ExpensePlus, you can use Category connectors 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, for internal financial reporting, and be able to get the data you need for end-of-year reporting.
Step 1: Category connector setup
Within Settings, go to the Category Connector Settings screen to set up your category connectors.
Set up your category connectors to mirror the classifications on the Methodist Church Accounts Template.
Step 2: Linking categories to category connectors
Once you've set up your category connectors, you then need to ensure each category is linked to the relevant category connector. This will ensure each category has a Methodist church classification.
To do this, within Settings, go to the Category Settings screen and select the Category Connectors tab at the top. For each category, click in the Category Connector column.
In the pop-up that appears, select the relevant category connector.
Once all the categories in your General Fund are linked, you will need to do the same for other funds. To do this, change the fund within the Fund dropdown at the top of the screen.
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.
The data from this report can be copied into the template form.
If you have multiple restricted funds, you will need to download this data to .csv and combine the totals of your restricted funds.
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.