8.6 Finance Set-up

The parts of Beacon described below are generally only available to the Site Administrator.

Finance Accounts
Click Finance accounts on the Home Page to view, create or edit accounts. Finance accounts should correspond one-to-one with your bank accounts (including PayPal).

Note: Some U3As have found it helpful to create an additional account called Membership which is used to store unbanked membership payments before they are transferred to the current or deposit account. However, it is down to each individual U3A to decide what works best for them.

Adding a new Account
Enter the account name in the Add new account box and press the Save button.

Changing an Account
Click edit next to the account name and change the name, if required.

Tick or untick the Active checkbox for the account according to whether or not the account is currently being used. Inactive accounts do not appear in the current ledger.

Press the Save button to commit the changes.

Note: Some accounts are locked. You are not allowed to change these.

Create Opening Balance
When using an account for the first time it is likely that a starting balance will need to be set up e.g. a bank balance. Do this by adding a transaction as described in the article 7.2 Transaction Record.

Note that if you intend to use Beacon to produce a 7.6 Financial Statement then the starting balance will need to be dated in the previous financial year and the balance brought forward. This will stop the balance appearing in the statement as income.

Removing an Account
Click delete next to the account name. You will not be allowed to delete an account if there are transactions recorded against it in any year. In which case, consider making it non-Active instead.

Finance Categories
All Financial Transactions are assigned to one or more Finance Categories in order to group together similar expenditure and income for analysis and reporting.

Click Finance categories on the Home page to view, create or edit categories.

Adding a Finance Category
Enter the category name in the Add new category box and press the Save button.

 

Changing a Finance Category
Click edit next to the category name and change the name, if required.

Tick or untick the Active checkbox for the Category according to whether or not the Category is currently being used. Inactive categories do not appear in new transactions.

Press the Save button to commit the changes.

Note: Some categories are locked. You are not allowed to change these.

Removing a Finance Category
Click delete next to the category name. You will not be allowed to delete a category if there are transactions recorded against it in any year. In which case, consider making it non-active instead.

Note: Some categories are locked. You are not allowed to change these.

Revision History

v1	2020	Graeme Bunting	First version
v2	2021-02-18	Graham Tigg	Added how to create an opening balance
v3	2021-05-16	Lyn Bossons	Added 'in any year' to 'Removing accounts/categories' sections.