All charities need to know how much money they have at any given time and how much they need to continue running.
This proposed system is required to provide details of unrestricted funds and restricted funds to show how much has been or will be spent on both the specific projects and the general running of the charity. In some cases an intelligent guess will have to be made of the likely amounts. In other cases, particularly where a grant has been obtained, the charity will have a better idea of the likely income and costs. As a result the Trustees, Committee and/or Board will always know how much money they have for the projects and to run the charity.
## Deliverables
OVERVIEW
All charities need to know how much money they have at any given time and how much they need to continue running.
Many charities have only one source of income namely donations. Others receive grants for specific pieces of work.
General donations belong to the charity (as unrestricted funds) these funds may be spent on the any of the charity's activities.
Grant money, (restricted funds) made available for specific projects, must be spent on those projects and an breakdown may be required by the funder showing how the money has been spent.
This proposed system is required to provide details of unrestricted funds and restricted funds to show how much has been or will be spent on both the specific projects and the general running of the charity. In some cases an intelligent guess will have to be made of the likely amounts. In other cases, particularly where a grant has been obtained, the charity will have a better idea of the likely income and costs. As a result the Trustees, Committee and/or Board will always know how much money they have for the projects and to run the charity.
The figures identify the "restricted" income and expenditure and the "unrestricted" income and expenditure separately with an overall banking figure at the end of each month.
It is sometimes possible to request a management fee when applying for grants.
The charity will be committed to an overhead cost, which it can either pay for itself, or try to obtain a contribution from the funder. You might as well ask in your application for funding even if the funder refuses to make a contribution. The amount can vary from as little as nothing to 25%. The resulting figure will appear in the "restricted" funds total income, but will be taken out as an expense and credited to the "unrestricted" funds income, thereby making a contribution to the general running costs of the charity.
We currently have a financial spreadsheet that allows charity based organisations to track financial information on a per project and merged basis.
It has an initial page that asks a list of financial / project based questions and then creates a spreadsheet based on the time over which a project will be delivered. We want to recreate this into a web based application and do away with using a spreadsheet program altogether as not all charity groups can use Excel or afford it.
Therefore we require a website where users can register - once logged in the site will allow them to enter their own data per single project.
A page will have a list of questions once the user has answered all the question a submit button is pressed and an overview page is then produced laid out like a spreadsheet. On this page will be a button that when pressed will pop-up a new window containing a two page landscape A4 sized PDF the first page has the restricted income, the second page the unrestricted income results again laid out in the format of a spreadsheet for printing as a report or to save on a local drive. A second button can offer to produce a condensed report (if there is nothing to show in a line remove it from the report)
However if the organisation needs to adjust figures or remove projects as they go along we need to allow this. The user would need to be presented with an option for each project to enable them to change the figures and then remake the PDF's for printing and or distribution within its organisation. (see menus below)
We need to present a report for each project and an overall report where all the projects data is merged together to give an overview based on all projects.
As projects are added, updated or removed the data is required to be dynamically updated for each project and a yearly based list created. It is anticipated that actual figures will be substituted for the budgeted figures and the spreadsheet updated accordingly
Data needs to be merged via a button that creates a PDF giving the organisation a report of individual projects and another PDF of all or selected projects combined offering an overview of its entire financial position.
When the create button is pressed and you get the spread sheet it needs to show restricted funds, restricted expenditure and the next line as the difference +/- Minuses in red
The next section of the spread sheet needs the same for Unrestricted, unrestricted expenditure, and the difference +/- Minuses in red
We need to then run a separate cash flow for each which would be the starting balance +/- income and expenditure extrapolated across the spread sheet.
The very bottom line would be the totals of the two cash flows which would represent the likely Bank Balance.
It may be that some of the income and expenses for the income need to be put in differently than 1/12 or what ever the division is. That could be dealt with in two ways. We could make the menu put ? figures in or which I think is more complicated, allow the user to put the correct figures in.
As the project progresses the users will want / need to put the actual figures in as the year advances. You could have a separate third column to show the differences between budget and actual
More details can be supplied on request