Net Assets on Balance Sheet and Income Statement don't agree

Kim Martinez

I've been working to reconcile net assets to our audited financial statements. I notice the Income Statement Net Assets don't agree to the Balance Sheet Net Assets. I've identified there is an equal difference in the Temp. Rest. and the Perm. Rest. such that it nets to $0. So, Temp. Rest. is higher on the Balance Sheet than the Income Statement by the same amount Perm. Rest. is lower on the Balance Sheet than the Income Statement. No JEs have been posted to Net Assets. Any suggestions on how to start sleuthing for the root issue? Thanks in advance!

Joseph Barr

@Kim Martinez
Hi Kim, you can do a transaction query to find the specific amount to see if it's only one figure. If not, I usually go to the next step, which is to verify the VCO for the Balance Sheet and the Income statement to see if any accounts are missing in either (or duplicated). Try this…and good luck.

Kim Martinez

@Joseph Barr Thank you for the ideas, Joseph. Can you help me know more what a VCO is? I'm a new user and pretty much self-teaching myself the software so am learning. Thanks again.

Joseph Barr

@Kim Martinez
Well, the VCO is the visual chart organizer which you have to create to program your financial statements. But I have to tell you, as a beginner you're going to have a hard time teaching yourself without the help of the Blackbaud support people. When I started using FE, I was constantly on the phone with them. Also, my company purchased the “Learn” system, so I was able to take tutorials and I took a lot of them. The program is very robust, and you'll need help at first. I'm sorry, but I don't have a lot of time to teach you the basics. Please call BB Support to get you started. Have a great day!

Kim Martinez

@Joseph Barr Thanks Joseph. Sorry about that, I wasn't expecting you to teach me just wanting to know what VCO stood for. On my self-taught journey, I've taken several BB classes and have several more on the schedule. I'll dig into more about VCO and see if it's set up properly. I appreciate your suggestions, have a great day!

Angela Tuttle

@Kim Martinez exactly what @Joseph Barr states. Try transaction query, then compare the VCOs that each report is linked to. You can also validate the VCO - you may be able to quickly see the issue.

Have you added any new account codes/numbers or reactivated one, if so sometimes this is missing from one of the VCO reports. That is usually the culprit for me.

You can also run a general ledger report for all transactions.

Hope you have already found it!

Kim Martinez

@Angela Tuttle Thank you Angela. While I'm new to FE, our org has used it for quite a long time. I appreciate your comments and am digging in to figure it out. F/S haven't been prepared in a traditional NFP format historically so I'm working to get them transitioned over. Thank you again!

Roberta A. Gilbert

@Angela Tuttle:

@Kim Martinez exactly what @Joseph Barr states. Try transaction query, then compare the VCOs that each report is linked to. You can also validate the VCO - you may be able to quickly see the issue.

Have you added any new account codes/numbers or reactivated one, if so sometimes this is missing from one of the VCO reports. That is usually the culprit for me.

You can also run a general ledger report for all transactions.

Hope you have already found it!

@Kim Martinez VCO stands for Visual Chart Organizer. When this function was recently moved to NXT from the database, they dropped the “V” and now it is just called a Chart Organizer. Basically a Chart Organizer lets you design the vertical contents and look & feel of a report (e.g. which accounts are included/omitted,), while the individual report edit options let you design the horizontal look of the report (e.g. columns).

Learning to get good at using the Chart Organizers can take some time, as there are hidden defaults built in which aren't always obvious. It's important to Verify your Chart Organizers any time you make changes to them, in case an account number is inadvertently left out of your report design.. Also, the layout I used most was eliminated when they moved to NXT - the Accounts layout, and I am hoping they bring it back.

To address your original issue with your Retained Earnings not being distributed properly, the problem might also lie with your Net Asset Class designations and not with the individual account numbers. We have this issue ourselves - where back in the beginning when we first set up FE from another software platform, some early users didn't realize that the Net Asset Class designation has to match the fund in the account number, or else a report like “Statement of Position” will incorrectly distribute the Net Asset Class. balances, even though the total account balances themselves may be correct. Hope that made sense.