7.10.6 Opening Balance for Groups

This article describes changes introduced in June 2024 to enable managing of the Groups expenditure that needs to be included in financial reporting, specifically as part of the total income for a u3a.

A new tick box on the Finance Accounts screen (see 8.6) enables the creation of Group Brought Forward (B/F) transactions for all Groups that have transactions associated with them in the previous Financial Year (not counting any initial Group B/F transaction).

• If the Group Balances tick-box is never ticked then Beacon behaves as previous.
• The B/F transactions will not be created/updated until either the Update B/F button is clicked, or when the Financial Year rolls over.
• Clearing the tick-box has no immediate effect until the user performs Update B/F or the Financial Year rolls over. Update B/F will remove all the Group B/F transactions and a Financial Year rollover behaves as previous with no Group B/F transactions generated.

Ledger by Account

In the Ledger (by Account) page the main B/F (excluding Groups) is shown first, followed by each Group B/F and then the Balance (Total Brought Forward) in bold.

Note than when sorting, by clicking a blue column heading, the B/F transactions are excluded so always appear first. 

Zooming in:

Ledger by Group

In the Ledger (by Group) page the balance for each Group and each Account at the year start is shown. The Main B/F transaction is not shown.

Note that for a Group that has transactions in more than one Account a Group B/F transaction will be listed for each Account.

When sorting, by clicking a blue column heading, the B/F transactions are excluded so always appear first. 

Zooming in:

1. Updating B/F and Financial Year roll-over

The Financial Year roll-over creates what is called here the Main B/F transaction for each Account. This is the balance of the account at the end of what is now the previous Financial Year.

With Group balances enabled, then Group B/F transactions need to be generated. This occurs when the user clicks Update B/F (for a single account) or the Financial Year rolls over (all enabled accounts).

For each Account all Groups that are associated with a transaction will need a Group B/F transaction generated with the balance as of the end of the previous financial year. The only exception to this is where the only transaction is a Group B/F transaction at the start of the year (previous Financial Year in the case of Financial Year roll-over) and that Group B/F transaction is for £zero.

2. Previous year transaction updates introducing a new Group

If a transaction in the previous year is added or updated and introduces a new Group, this will have no effect until Update B/F is clicked. The process checks if a new Group B/F transaction needs to be created because transaction(s) for that Group have been created in the previous year since the last update.

It also removes any Group B/F transactions that now have £zero and no transactions in the previous Financial Year (there will only be a Group B/F balance of £zero from the start of last year that remains in place).

3. Deleting a Group

If a Group is deleted then any transactions associated with that Group become transactions that are no longer associated with a Group.

However, if there is a Group B/F transaction for the deleted Group it will remain until Update B/F is performed. Amounts for the deleted Group will then be included in the Main B/F transaction.

In this case a Group B/F transaction’s Group can be identified from the Detail field.

Any Group B/F balances for previous years remain in place for the deleted Group. They will be identified by the Detail column.

Revision History

v1	2024-06-02	Graeme Bunting	First version