Finance Categories

Finance Categories let you segment your income and expenses into funds and set yearly budgets to track giving and spending against targets.

What is a Finance Category?

A Finance Category is a fund or bucket that you record income or expenses against. Categories are how Lightpost segments money so you can report on it, and they are where you set the budgets that let elders and deacons see their standing against a yearly target.

A typical congregation might create categories such as:

• Regular Contribution

• Special Contribution

• Missions Support

• Building Fund

• Benevolence

Each category is marked as either income (money coming in) or an expense (money going out), and can optionally be exposed to members for Online Giving contributions or reimbursement requests.

Finance Categories are available when either the Financial Management or Online Giving feature is enabled for your account. You'll need an admin role with finance permissions to manage them.

Finding Finance Categories

From the admin area, open Finance in the sidebar. On the main Finance page, click the Finance Categories card (it shows the number of categories and active budgets), or use the Categories breadcrumb. This opens the Categories list at Finance → Categories.

Managing categories

The Categories list is the home for everything in this section. From here you can:

• Search for a category by name.

• Filter the list using the Filters button. You can filter by minimum budget, maximum budget, budget year, and category type (Income, Expense, Contribution, Reimbursement).

• Export the current list to Excel with the Excel button.

• Reorder categories by dragging the handle (≡) on the left of each row. The order you set here controls the order categories appear elsewhere in the app, such as when members choose a category while giving.

Each row shows the category Name, its budget for the current year, and Type badges indicating whether it is an Income, Contribution, Expense, and/or Reimbursement category. Click a category's name to open its detail page.

Creating a category

1. On the Categories page, click Add Category.

2. Fill in the Category Information:

   • Category Name — the name members and admins will see (e.g. "Special Evangelism Fund"). Required.

   • Accounting Code — an optional code from your accounting system (e.g. 5000-101).

   • <Year> Year Budget — an optional starting budget for the current year, entered in dollars (e.g. 1200.00). If you enter an amount here, Lightpost automatically creates a budget for the current year so you don't have to add one separately. You can always add or change budgets later.

   • Income Category? — check this if the category represents money coming in.

     • Contribution Category? — when income is selected, check this to show the category to members as something they can give toward with Online Giving.

   • Expense Category? — check this if the category represents money going out.

     • Reimbursement Category? — when expense is selected, check this to show the category to members as something they can submit reimbursement requests against.

   • Description — optional notes about the category.

3. Click Save Changes.

A category is either income or an expense — the two are mutually exclusive. Choose Income for contributions and other money received, and Expense for money the congregation spends.

Editing a category

1. From the Categories list, click the category name to open it.

2. In the left sidebar, choose General Settings.

3. Update the Category Name, Accounting Code, Description, and — depending on the category type — the Contribution Category or Reimbursement Category option.

4. Click Save Changes.

The category detail page also has an Overview tab, which summarizes the current-year budget, the number of transactions recorded against the category, and which type flags (Income, Expense, Contribution, Reimbursement) are enabled.

Setting budgets

Budgets are set per year, per category, so you can keep a history of each year's target and compare actuals against it. A category can have one budget for each year.

To manage budgets:

1. Open a category from the Categories list.

2. In the left sidebar, choose Budgets. This lists every budget for the category by Year, along with its Description and Budget amount.

Add a budget

1. On the Budgets tab, click Create a Budget.

2. In the dialog, set:

   • Budget Year — choose the year this budget applies to. Years that already have a budget are not shown, so you can't create duplicates.

   • Yearly Budget — the budget amount in dollars (e.g. 12000.00).

   • Description — optional notes.

3. Click Create Budget.

Edit or delete a budget

1. On the Budgets tab, click Edit on the budget's row.

2. Update the Yearly Budget amount or Description and click Save Changes, or click Delete to remove that year's budget.

Budgets are tracked yearly. As income or expenses are recorded against a category, Lightpost compares the totals to that year's budget so leaders can see how much of the budget has been used in near real-time.