You will need the Full Write Accounting permission to perform this action.
Accounting tags overview
Accounting tags let you label income and expense activity with an extra dimension — like department, ministry, campus, or grant — on top of your existing funds and accounts. Once activity is tagged, you can filter and group your financial reports by that label to answer questions like "How much did the youth ministry spend this year?" or "What did the north campus bring in this quarter?"
A tag is a reusable label you attach to a transaction line. Tags are organized into tag groups (for example, a "Department" group holds the values "Youth," "Music," and "Missions"), and reports can filter or group by them — without changing your chart of accounts.
Tags, funds, and accounts
One Church Software already tracks money two ways. Tags add an optional third dimension on top of that.
Account — the kind of money (Contributions Income, Salaries, Rent). Carries a balance.
Fund — the restricted pool the money belongs to (General Fund, Building Fund, Missions Fund). Carries a balance and must always balance.
Tag — the ministry, department, or initiative that drove the activity (Youth, Music, North Campus). Does not carry a balance — tags describe income and expense activity only.
A single transaction line can have a fund and one tag from each tag group. For example, a $500 expense could be Account = Salaries, Fund = General Fund, Department = Youth, Campus = North Campus.
Tip: Because tags only describe income and expense activity, they appear on the Statement of Activities (Income Statement), transaction lists, and the Budget to Actual report — never on the Balance Sheet or Trial Balance. A tag-sliced balance sheet would not balance.
Set up a tag group
Tag groups are managed under Accounting > Settings > Tags.
In the left-hand navigation, expand Accounting and select Settings. Open the Tags tab.
Click + Add New. The Add Tag Group dialog opens.
Fill in the group details:
Name — the label for the group (for example, "Department" or "Campus"). Required.
Description (optional) — a short note about what this group is for.
Color — the color used for the colored pill shown on tagged transactions. Required.
Required On Entry? — when on, every income or expense line on a posted entry must carry a value from this group. See the next section for details.
Active? — when on, the group appears on entries and in reports. Turn this off to hide the group without deleting historical data.
Under Values, add the individual labels people will pick from (for example, "Youth," "Music," and "Missions").
Click bulk add to paste several values at once.
Click alphabetize to sort the list.
Drag the handle on the left of each row to reorder values.
Click Save. The new group appears in the tag groups list.
Tip: "Department" is not a special built-in feature — it is a tag group that ships pre-seeded as a starting point. Rename it, deactivate it, or add other groups like "Campus," "Event," or "Grant."
Mark a tag group as required
When a tag group is marked Required On Entry?, every income or expense line on a journal entry must carry a value from that group before the entry can be posted. The check fires at posting, not while the entry is a draft — you can save a work-in-progress entry without the tag, but you cannot post it.
To turn the requirement on or off:
Go to Accounting > Settings > Tags.
Click the tag group's name to open it.
Toggle Required On Entry? on or off.
Click Save.
If a user sees a message like "A 'Department' tag is required on every income or expense line," that group is marked required. They can either add a tag to each income or expense line on the entry, or an administrator can edit the group and turn the requirement off.
Edit, deactivate, delete, or merge tags
Tags are designed to protect your audit trail. Once a tag group or value has been used on a transaction or budget, One Church Software prevents you from silently removing it. The options change based on whether the tag has been used yet.
Deactivate or delete a tag group
Delete — only available if the group has never been used on a transaction or budget. Removes the group entirely.
Deactivate — replaces the delete option once any record uses one of the group's values. Hides the group from new entries while preserving the historical data attached to it. Past reports continue to display the tag.
To deactivate a group, open it from Accounting > Settings > Tags and toggle Active? off, then click Save.
Hide a single value
Inside a tag group, an individual value that has been used on a record cannot be deleted outright. You can hide it instead — the value stops appearing in pickers on new entries, but it stays valid on the records that already carry it.
Merge duplicate values
If you created two values that mean the same thing (for example, "Youth" and "Youth Ministry"), use Merge to repoint every transaction and budget line from one value onto the other. The leftover value is then removed.
Merging only works within the same tag group — you cannot merge a value from one group into another.
Tag a transaction
Tags are applied at the line-item level on journal entries and register entries. Because bills, deposits, and expenses all post as journal entries behind the scenes, tagging the line covers all of them.
Open (or create) a journal entry or register entry.
After putting in an income or expense line, click the tag icon Add tags under the description. A side panel opens showing the line's Account and Fund, with one dropdown per active tag group.
Pick a value in each group as needed. You can leave a group blank unless it is marked Required On Entry?.
Close the panel. The chosen tags appear as colored pills on the line. Click a pill any time to change it.
Save As Draft or Post the entry as usual.
Tip: A line can hold at most one value from each group — one Department and one Campus, but not two Departments. This keeps report totals exact so a line is never double-counted.
A few notes about where tags can and cannot be applied:
Tags can only be added to income and expense lines — not to bank, asset, or liability lines.
Fund transfers have no tag picker. Transfers only move money between funds and never touch income or expense, so there is nothing for a tag to describe.
Tag a budget
Budgets can be tagged so you can budget by department (or any other dimension), not just by account. Tagging is set up on the budget itself — not on every line — so you choose the dimension once and every account inherits a default.
Open the budget you want to tag and click Edit budget.
Choose a Tag Group — the dimension this budget is budgeted along.
Optionally choose a Default Tag. Every account in the budget then inherits that default. To budget a specific account under a different value, open the account or fund row and pick another tag — that account now overrides the default.
Save the budget.
You have three ways to set up tagging on a budget:
Default plus overrides — set a default tag and let most accounts inherit it. Overridden accounts show their tag as a pill under the account name in the grid; accounts on the default show nothing.
Mix per account — leave the default blank and tag each account individually. Every account's tag shows under its name, and any account left untagged is flagged so nothing is missed.
No budget tag — pick no tag group and the budget is not tagged at all. No tag picker appears anywhere for that budget.
Tip: The budget tag only does one job — it lets a tag-filtered Budget to Actual report compare apples to apples. If you filter the report by "Youth," the budgeted column shows only Youth-tagged budget rows and the actual column shows only Youth-tagged spending. Without a budget tag, a filtered actual would be measured against the whole account's budget — a meaningless comparison.
Report by tag
In a report's options panel, tags show up two ways:
Filter by tag — show only the activity that carries the tag values you select.
Group by tag — turn the single Total column into one column per tag value.
To use either, open the report, expand Additional options, and choose a tag group under Group by or pick values under the Tags filter.
Group by tag
When you group an income statement by the Department tag, each department gets its own column. Lines that carry no tag fall into an (Untagged) column. Each column adds across to the same Total a normal income statement would show — tagging never changes the money, only how it is sliced.
Which reports support tags
Statement of Activities (Income Statement) — filter and group by tag.
Transaction List — filter and group by tag.
Budget to Actual — filter by tag (group-by is not supported).
Balance Sheet and Trial Balance — tags are not available on purpose. Tags describe income and expense activity, which does not belong on a balance report.
Tip: If you filter Budget to Actual by a tag your budget is not tagged with (for example, budgets tagged by Department but the report filtered by Campus), the budgeted column would read $0 against real spending. The report shows a warning in that case so you know to tag the budget on whichever dimension you want to compare.
View tags in entry lists
Tags also appear as a read-only Tags column in the three Accounting > Entries lists — General Ledger, Journal Entries, and Register — and in their CSV exports (semicolon-separated). This lets a bookkeeper review tagging at a glance without opening each entry. To edit a tag, open the entry and use the line-item tag panel described above.
Frequently asked questions
Tags are not showing up on the Balance Sheet.
That is by design. Tags only apply to income and expense activity, so they appear on the Statement of Activities and transaction reports — never on the Balance Sheet or Trial Balance.
A budget is tagged but the tag is not doing anything on reports.
Budget tags only take effect on a tag-filtered Budget to Actual report. With no tag filter applied, budget amounts are simply summed per account and the tag is ignored. Apply the tag filter on the report to see the comparison.
An entry will not post because a tag is required.
The tag group is marked Required On Entry?. Either tag each income or expense line on the entry, or an administrator can edit the group and turn the requirement off. Drafts can be saved without the tag — the check only fires on posting.
Can a line have two values from the same group?
No — one value per group, per line. One Department and one Campus is fine; two Departments is not. This keeps report totals exact.
How do I clean up duplicate tag values?
Open the tag group and use Merge to move every transaction and budget line from the duplicate onto the value you want to keep. Merging only works within one group.
Why can a tag group not be deleted?
If any record uses one of its values, the option becomes Deactivate instead, to protect historical data and reports. Only never-used groups can be deleted outright.
Why is there no tag picker on a fund transfer?
Transfers only move money between funds (asset and equity accounts) and never touch income or expense, so there is nothing for a tag to describe.
How are tags different from funds?
Funds are restricted pools of money that carry balances and must balance. Tags are a free-form reporting label on income and expense only, with no balance. A line can have both.
Other Helpful Articles