Paper Trail

by Ruby D. Scully
(Waterflow, New Mexico USA)

I'm curious how others handle a disbursement that does not have an invoice.

For instance, at my small church we set aside funds from our tithes & offerings to be sent to the State convention, the local Baptist Association, to a pregnancy crises center and a Camp and children's home.

None of these have an "invoice" to pay from since it is funds set aside for these particular missions that the church has previously approved.

I wanted to have a better paper trail for these disbursements and created a "Check Request" to be completed. However the secretary and pastor feel that this is too much "paper" work and the computer generated check stub should be sufficient.

Since the church approved the disbursements, a check request is not required. I've been a bookkeeper for 38 years and for every check that did not have an invoice, a check request was prepared as part of the paper trail. The computer generated check stub is attached to it.

I need some feed back as to how others handle this type of disbursement.

Thank you so much for your feed back.