What year-end procedures are required in Deacon 97/99? Support Center

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	What year-end procedures are required in Deacon 97/99?

Solution One of the most annoying and limiting features of many financial systems is a complicated and often irreversible year-end closing procedure. DEACON99 does away with this and puts you in charge of your own schedule when it comes to ending one fiscal year and starting the next. One of the keys that makes this possible is the required “Pledge Year” field in the pledges and offerings screens. Because the fiscal years are grouped according to this key, you may enter past, present and future Pledge Year information into the same working files and the reporting system will handle each entry appropriately. There are, however, some utilities which have been provided to help keep your working files down to a manageable size and to allow you to maintain an on-line historical record of pledges and offerings.

There are no changes or procedures required for the following sections: Members, Groups, Donors, Baptisms, Chrismations, Weddings, Funerals, Memorials and Reports.

Year-End Procedures Overview

1: Print all the parishioner statements and reports you need for mailing and filing, with the following in mind:
a. We recommend you print an extra set of parishioner statements for your permanent files.
b. After your statements have been mailed (probably in January for the past year), we recommend you wait a few weeks for those inevitable calls requiring corrections or adjustments. Complete statements can only be printed from the current Pledges and Offerings files, not the history files.

2: Back up your data! Use either the built-in DEACON99 Backup Utility or your own system procedure (such as a backup to CD).

3: Once you are sure there are no more changes or reports required from the past year’s data and you have backed up your information, proceed with the following steps:
a. Transfer Pledges (see note below about copying pledges if necessary)
b. Transfer Offerings
c. Copy (if necessary) and Purge Time and Talents.

4: Change the Current Pledge Year setting in System-Configuration-Membership. Set the field Current Pledge Year to the new year.

5: That’s it!

The detailed instructions for each of these simple steps follow below.

Additional Details: Pledges and Offerings:

1: At the end of the fiscal year, you may begin entering pledges and offerings for the next year by simply indicating the correct Pledge Year when they are entered. (Optional: If your parish uses a fixed pledge amount from year to year, you may save time by simply copying this year’s pledges using the Copy Pledges procedure (System-Utilities-Copy-Pledges).

2: Produce the necessary year-end statements and reports. We suggest that you produce two copies of the parishioner statements: one to mail and one to keep on file.

3: Once the new year is underway and the previous year’s statements and reports have been produced, simply move last year’s pledges to the Pledge History file using the Transfer Pledges procedure (System-Utilities-Transfer-Pledges) and move last year’s offerings to the Offerings History file using the Transfer Offerings procedure (System-Utilities-Transfer-Offerings) They will now be available for reporting and even editing via the Pledge History and Offerings History screens and reports. All the new year’s pledges and offerings will remain in the current working files.

Additional Details: Time & Talents Pledges:

Since Time and Talents pledges and volunteers can change from year to year, DEACON99 requires that you refresh this database every year.
1. At the beginning of each year, create a new year’s Time & Talents pledge list by copying this last year’s pledges to this year using the Copy Time & Talents Pledges procedure (System-Utilities-Copy-Time & Talents). Make any changes or deletions necessary to update the information.

2. Purge last year’s Time & Talents pledge list by using the Purge Time & Talents Pledges procedure (System-Utilities-Purge-Time & Talents). This will permanently delete last year’s Time & Talents pledge records.

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22 Jan 2008 12:49 PM