Accounting for church building fund

1. What is the accounting entry to record cash received for church building fund?
2. Is this fund reported as income in the income statement?

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Accounting for Donations
by: Vickey

I will answer your second question first. Yes. all donations should be recorded as "revenue" and show in the Statement of Activity (Income Statement).

Now onto the first question... how you record the "restricted" donation would depend on your accounting software and how you have it set up.

I track "restricted" monies in QuickBooks Online by using classes, locations, projects, or donors (if I am not using QBO to track individual donors). Which one or combination I use depends on my individual clients, but probably the easiest way for a church that is not tracking categories for 990 reporting is setting up classes to track what restricted donations come in and show how that restricted monies was spent.

Aplos is easier. I would set up the Building Fund and then record donation on a "Restricted Donations" income account and assign that fund to it. I could even go further and track specific building campaigns with Aplos tag feature.

If you are recording in a paper general ledger, you could debit Cash and credit a "Building Donations" income account.

See more on basic accounting in my Church Accounting Package. Click on "Packages" in the top navigation links and then the Church Accounting Package.

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