Wondering if anyone has kept the PTA acct open to spend down the monies in that account and deposit all new monies into the PTO acct. The bank says we can do it this way - just wondering if it's a sensible thing to do or should we just transfer monies from one to the other?

Haven't done it myself, but time and time again the advice in these forums is to spend down the PTA account while building up the PTO account with incoming revenue.

It would be hard for anyone to argue with spending the PTA funds for normal activities and expenses. But those opposed to starting a PTO, or district/state levels of the PTA might not be so agreeable to a direct transfer. It's not in the PTA's mission to start a PTO.

Previous posters have mentioned policies where any remaining assets of a dissolved PTA chapter revert to the state PTA. So your goal is to liquidate those assets through normal operations such that they are all used in accordance with the PTA purpose.

We opened our PTO account as soon as we received our EIN and registed with the state. However, since our non-profit designation had not yet come through, we were advised not to transfer funds from the PTA account. We did just what JHB recommended by spending down the PTA account while putting deposits into the PTO account. We did the changeover towards the end of the school year and prepaid a number of items before June. This helped us to close out the PTA account by mid-summer and start the new school year with just one entity (PTO) and bank account.