Are you a current MoneyMinder user, ready to get a new financial year setup? Just follow these instructions:
- Add a new Financial Year
- Carry forward bank balances and uncleared transactions into the new Financial Year
- Set up a budget in the new Financial Year
- Copy Contacts from the prior financial year
1. Add a new Financial Year
Add a new financial year by clicking on the Financial Year box in the upper left and selecting Add new financial year.
Identify the year you’d like to add and click Create.
You should be able to see the financial year here along with the range that financial year covers:
2. Carry forward bank balances and uncleared transactions into the new Financial Year
Once you’ve reconciled your bank account(s) thru the last day of the financial year you can carry those balances and uncleared transactions forward to the next year.
Note: Your bank accounts must be reconciled to the very last day of the financial year for this feature to work.
Click the Banking icon in the toolbar.
Click Copy Bank Accounts.
Click the Edit button to the right of your bank account name:
Click the green button that says Carry Forward Last Year’s Account Information. This will carry forward your bank balance and any uncleared items from the prior financial year.
NOTE: This will replace your current balance and any uncleared transactions that are there with the ones you are copying from the prior year.
Click Save.
NOTE: If the green check mark is not there, be sure that your account is reconciled thru the end of the previous financial year.
Manually add bank balances and uncleared transactions
If your bank accounts have not been reconciled thru the prior financial year, click the Edit button and manually enter your bank balance and add any uncleared transactions from the prior financial year.
Enter the starting balance at the beginning of your financial year. This should be taken directly from your bank statement.
Click Add Uncleared Deposit or Add Uncleared Withdrawal to enter outstanding checks or deposits that were written in the prior financial year but did not clear the bank until after the start of the new financial year.
Note that entries you make in this section do not affect your current year numbers at all. They are here as placeholders for the bank reconciliations. This is a security measure. It is most transparent to enter the bank statement opening balance, which is easily verifiable, and then enter any known outstanding items to arrive at a true starting balance for the year.
For uncleared deposits: Enter the date, who the money was received from, the amount, and a reference number if any. Continue to do this for every deposit that you show as being made in your previous year that did not show on the bank statement.
For uncleared withdrawals: Enter the date, who the money was paid to, the amount, and a check or reference number if any.
When you’re finished adding uncleared transactions, click Save.
3. Set up a budget in the new Financial Year
Click the Budget icon in the toolbar.
You can create your budget using one of the following:
- Copy one of your existing budgets from a prior financial year.
- Select one of MoneyMinder’s templates.
- Add a budget from scratch.
Note: Once you save your selection you will not be able to start over.
To copy one of your existing budgets, click the dropdown menu under Copy a budget that you set up in a previous financial year. Choose one of the years displayed below and choose the budget year to copy.
This will allow your group to copy a budget from a prior year.
Modify this budget to reflect any changes and click Save.
Making changes to a budget that’s been copied from a prior year will NOT affect the financial year the budget was copied from.
Note: Unchecking “Include budgeted income & expense amounts that you used in that year” before selecting the budget you want to copy will copy only the heading, subheading, and category names.
To select a budget template click the Choose a MoneyMinder budget template to start with drop-down menu:
Modify this template to suit your needs by deleting items that are not relevant to your group and adding items that are.
Click Save when done.
To add a budget from scratch, click Start New Budget:
Create your budget by adding headers, sub-headers, and categories.
Click Save when done.
4. Copy Contacts from the prior financial year
If you use the Contacts feature, you might want to copy your Contacts from the prior year.
Click on the Contacts icon in the toolbar.
Then click Copy contacts from another financial year…
If you’ve used the Contacts feature in prior years you will be asked if you’d like to carry forward activity account balances.
- Check the box to carry those forward.
- Uncheck the box if you’d like to start everyone with a $0 balance.
Then click Copy Contacts.
Note: You will only have the option to copy contacts from a prior financial year if there are no contacts entered in the year you would like to copy them into.
Setting up the volunteers and members in the new year is equally important. There should be a connection between entering someone on the list paying their membership in the banking portion of MoneyMinder that automatically shows that member paid in the membership list. I found I have to do it twice: enter the payment in the banking portion using the drop down list of members, then enter that date and payment amount in the membership portion. Can these be linked? We might generate a better tracking of how long that member has been a member without physically looking back through each year to see if they are a paid member, year after year. OR maybe I’m missing something?
Thanks for your input, Carol. We wholeheartedly agree and are working behind the scenes to make the Contacts section work more seamlessly. Expect to see some updates in that area yet this year. We appreciate you helping us make MoneyMinder even better!
I can’t find the copy contact from prior year link when setting up 2022. I started adding new members, but then realized the new year didn’t have our contacts from 2021. Do you know where I might find it?
Hi Anna,
The Copy Contacts is only available if there are no Contacts in your new year. In this case, you’ll need to delete the Contacts you’ve entered in your new financial year before the Copy Contacts button will appear.
Cyndi