Contents

• Introduction
• Become Familiar with Accounts
• Workflow
• Add Funds
• Add Categories
• Add Accounts
  • Important When First Setting Up Your Accounts
• Add Transactions
  • Add Income or Expense Transactions
  • Transfer Money Between Accounts
• Import Transactions
  • Manage Import Rules
  • The Import Process
  • Run the Import
• Work with Your Account Transactions List
  • Edit Transactions
  • Delete Transactions

 

Introduction

In accounting, the Account represents a record of all transactions that occur within an organization - both deposits and withdrawals. These transactions commonly occur within a bank account, and one organization may have several accounts. Within your accounting, the Account holds all assigned Transactions, Funds, and Categories. 

This guide shows you how to manage Accounts within ChMeetings Accounting. 

If you have not yet done your Accounting setup or need to familiarize yourself with relevant terms, please see Accounting Basics and Setup.

 

Become Familiar with Accounts

You can reach the Accounts section by going to Accounting > Accounts. This is what the section looks like when there are no records:

When you add records, your Accounts section will look similar to the one below. The Accounts Dashboard provides various charts that show your financial standing at a glance. The charts are the following:

• Accounts Insights: Displays the amounts available within each of your accounts. 
• Funds Insights: Displays the amounts available within each of your accounts. 
• Income Breakdown: Displays a breakdown of income per Fund.
• Expense Breakdown: Displays a breakdown of Expenses per Fund.
• Income Vs. Expenses: Displays a comparison between the amounts received as income and the amounts spent.

In the Accounts section, you will find options to create new Accounts and Funds; separate lists for existing Accounts and Funds as well as insights graphs showing the available amounts in each of your Accounts and Funds. 

 

Workflow

There is a logical order within which you must work with Accounts: 

1. First, you need to know any Funds or balances you may have allocated to specific purposes from the Account you want to add. Once you have the list of Funds, you need to add it to ChMeetings before creating the Account, because you must enter the Funds’ Starting Balance during Account creation. There is a preconfigured General Fund, so if you have no Funds at all, then you can use this as a catch-all without creating more Funds.
2. Next, we recommend adding any Categories you might already be using. Again, this is optional. If you do not have previously-used Categories, then there are General Offerings (Income) and General Expense Categories preconfigured by default.
3. Then once your Funds and Categories are clear, and created in ChMeetings as needed, you can proceed to creating your Account.
4. Lastly, if you want to import Transactions, you can do so after creating your Account. 

Moving forward, we will be going through this workflow in detail.

 

Add Funds

To add Funds, go to Accounting > Accounts, and click the ⨁ icon above the Funds widget.

 

Name your Fund and click Save. 

 

Your new Fund is now listed on your main Accounts screen, within the Funds widget. 

 

Add Categories

To add Categories, go to Accounting > Categories and click Add Category.

In the Add Category window, configure the following: 

1. Name the Category. We recommend using a short, suggestive name.
2. Select a Type: This determines whether the Transactions you record under this Category represent income or expenses.
3. Select a Default Fund: This is the Fund that is preselected when adding a Transaction to the Category. You can leave this blank and any transactions associated to this Category will default to the General Fund, 

 

Once created, your Category will be listed under Accounting > Categories. 

 

Add Accounts

Once you are done adding any needed Funds and Categories, you are ready to create your Account. To get started, go to Accounting > Accounts; click on the ⨁ icon above the Accounts widget. 

 

In the Add Account window, follow the steps below: 

1. Account Information: 
   • Name: Give your account a name, such as “Checking”, “Savings”, etc.
   • Type: Select whether this is an Asset or Liability account.

Asset represents what you own - such as a bank account held by your church.
Liability refers to what you owe - such as loans, mortgages, credit cards, etc.

2. Starting Balance: Add the balance from the day before you began tracking transactions in ChMeetings Accounting as the starting balance. You must enter a starting balance for each of your funds. If you did not use Funds previously and do not want to use them moving forward, then your Account balance should be allocated to the General Fund. 
3. Start Date: Add the day when you begin recording transactions in ChMeetings. This is your accounting start date for the account you are adding. 
4. Save when ready.

 

Your new Account is now listed on your main Accounts screen: 

 

Important When First Setting Up Your Accounts

Once creating an account, you can no longer edit any information except the Name. Once you begin recording transactions, Accounts can no longer be deleted either, unless you also remove associated transactions. This is standard accounting practice. Removing and recreating accounts may require redoing your initial accounting setup; which is why we recommend that you take great care and ensure that you are entering correct data during initial setup.   

 

Add Transactions

To add a new Transaction, start by going to Accounting > Accounts, then clicking the Account to which you want to add the Transaction. 

Next, click Add Transaction

 

In the Add Transaction window, configure the following: 

1. Enter the Transaction Date.
2. Select the Type:
   • Expense Transactions are meant to be used for expenses made from the selected account.
   • Income Transactions are meant to be used for giving transactions and other income being received into your accounts.
   • Transfer Transactions are used when you want to transfer funds between accounts.
3. Optionally, select the Payee: This is the person or organization to or from whom funds are directed. If the payee you’re looking for is not listed, click Add Payee Learn more about Managing Payees

Add Income or Expense Transactions

The process is the same regardless of whether you add an Income or an Expense Transaction:

1. Select the Category. You must have previously created the Category to see it here. (Please see Add Categories, above in this guide.) If you add an Expense Transaction, you will only see Expense Categories. If you add an Income Transaction, you will only see Income Categories.
2. Select the Fund. If you have selected a Default Fund when creating the selected Category, then it will be preselected for you. If there is no Default Fund added to the Category, then the General Fund will be preselected. In any case, you must select a Fund to allocate each Category to. 
3. Add a Note if required.
4. Enter the Amount corresponding to the selected Category.
5. Add more items by clicking Add Item, and repeat the steps from a. to d..
6. Validate the total amount for the overall transaction. This should be the sum of all Category amounts. You can delete items by clicking the ⊖ icon next to it.
7. Attach a file (document, image, spreadsheet, etc.) This file should be a maximum of 5MB in size. This can be, for example, a bank statement or transaction file generated from a previous accounting system. You can add a memo to the attachment.
8. Save when ready or click Save & Add New to open a new Transaction window and add another transaction.

 

Note that you can select one or more Categories or Funds per Transaction and each amount will be allocated accordingly, to the selected Category and Fund.

 

Transfer Money Between Accounts

To transfer money between accounts, you must add a Transfer Transaction, as follows:

1. Add a Transaction, as explained above, under Add Transactions.
2. For the Transaction Type, select Transfer. 
3. Optionally, select a Payee.
4. Select whether you want to transfer to or from a specific account:
   • Transfer To lets you transfer money to the destination account you select below (from the current account, to which you add the Transaction). 
   • Transfer From lets you transfer money from the source account you select below (to the current account, to which you add the Transaction).
5. Select the Account. This acts as a destination account if you use Transfer To; or a source account if you use Transfer From.
6. Select the Fund to allocate the transaction to.
7. Add a Note if required.
8. Enter the Amount corresponding to the selected Category.
9. Add more items by clicking Add Item, and repeat the steps from a. to d..
10. Validate the total amount for the overall transaction. This should be the sum of all Category amounts. You can delete items by clicking the ⊖ icon next to it.
11. Attach a file (document, image, spreadsheet, etc.) This file should be a maximum of 5MB in size. This can be, for example, a bank statement or transaction file generated from a previous accounting system. You can add a memo to the attachment.
12. Save when ready or click Save & Add New to open a new Transaction window and add another transaction.

Once added, your transaction, regardless of type, is listed under your Account, along with its associated Category, Fund, and Total Amount. If you have added a multiple-item Transaction, with multiple Categories and Funds, then these will be listed as Multiple, under their respective Category and Fund columns.

 

Import Transactions

You can import transactions into ChMeetings Accounting using OFX, QFX, QIF, QBO, CSV, XLS, and XLSX files. If needed, you can create import rules that match imported transactions to specific Categories or Funds. 

 

Manage Import Rules

If the transactions you want to import must belong to specific Categories or Funds, you can save time by setting up Rules before import. When applied, these Rules will automatically allocate imported transactions to the corresponding Categories or Funds, depending on the criteria you set. 

To add a new Import Rule, go to Accounting > Accounts, and select the Account to which you want to import transactions. 

Click Import Transactions, then click Manage Rules.

 

In the Manage Rules window, click Add Rule.

In the Add Rule window, configure the following: 

1. Name your Rule.
2. Select the Type of transactions it should filter for.
3. Select the Rule’s Criteria. You can create the following logical operations:
   1. “Description contains / does not contain / is exactly ….” This option matches with the “Description” or “Memo” fields in your import files. In the text field, enter the text by which you want to filter transactions. For example, if we want to assign book-related expenses to the Book Purchase Category and the Library Fund, then we will filter transactions by the word “book”. The text field is not case-sensitive and only accepts single items. Logical operators are not supported. 
   2. “Amount equals / does not equal / is greater than / is less than …” This field matches the transaction amount in your import file.
4. Select an Action: Here is where you decide which Category and which Fund the transaction should be allocated to, once imported.
5. Save when ready.

 

Once your rule is saved, you will see it listed in the Manage Rules window. Here is where you can toggle the Rule on or off, edit I✐) or delete it (🗑). Note that deleted rules cannot be restored.

 

For all active Rules, any imports will be assigned to the corresponding Category and Fund, as set by the Rule.

 

The Import Process

You can import transactions from the following file formats:

• OFX (Money), 
• QFX (Quicken), 
• QIF, QBO (Quickbooks), 
• CSV, XLS, XLSX (Excel).

For OFX, QFX, QIF, QBO files, ChMeetings tries to match the import rules. if there is no matching rule, new transactions are imported to the default Category and Fund.

For CSV, XLS, and XLSX files, please download the template and process your transactions according to the template columns. If imported transactions have no assigned Category and Fund in the spreadsheet, then ChMeetings matches import rules and assigns the defaults if no rule matches. Upon uploading the import file, ChMeetings highlights the rows that contain errors. Please either edit and re-upload your file, or uncheck the rows with errors so they will not be imported. Please upload files of up to 100 rows. This makes it easier to review the data and ensure its accuracy.

 

Run the Import

To run a transaction import, please follow the steps below: 

1. Go to Accounting > Accounts and select the Account to which you want to import transactions. 
2. Click Import Transactions.
   
   
   
   
3. Click Select File to choose the file to upload from your computer. You can import OFX, QFX, QIF, and QBO files. 
4. Click Start Import once your file uploads.
   
   
   
   
5. On the next screen, review the imported transactions and check those that you validate. You can edit or delete transactions as needed. Click Import Checked Items when ready.
   
   

Once imported, the transactions will be listed within your Account Transactions and will be allocated to the selected Category and Fund, if you have set this up in a Rule. Otherwise, imported transactions will be assigned to the General Fund and General Income or Expense Categories.

 

Work with Your Account Transactions List

Each of your Accounts displays its associated list of Transactions, whether imported or added manually. 

The list allows you to see all transactions, but also to filter them by type (income or expense), by Fund, Category, or Date Range. You can navigate larger lists using the pagination at the bottom.

The total amount of all listed transactions is displayed at the top, next to the Account Name.

 

Edit Transactions

You can edit any transaction using the corresponding Edit option. All fields can be edited, with one exception: For Transfer transactions, it is no longer possible to update the Transaction Type. 

 

Delete Transactions

You can delete any transaction. Please keep in mind that this cannot be reversed. You must confirm your choice before completing the deletion.