MUST HAVE REFERENCE GUIDE

Site Map or Site Search

CHURCH ACCOUNTING PACKAGE

What degree of detail is essential for church financial reports?

by John
(NM)

What is the best practices or industry standard for the degree and level of information on financial statements for a church's financial statements which are provided to Finance Committee and or the Board Members for the Boards Approval.

Also what are list of financial statements to be provided and Frequency? Income Statement, Balance sheet, Statement of cash flows, ratio analysis, Actual vs Budget monthly, quarterly annually? Year over Year? Provide statements Monthly, quarterly?

Currently the level of information provide is very limited and it is hard to tell much about the organization. Statements are limited to as few as 5-10 lines of info for a church of over 100yrs of age and over 1200 members.

Comments for What degree of detail is essential for church financial reports?

Click here to add your own comments

Apr 15, 2015
 Financial Reports/details?
by: Lewis in NC

You get 5 or 6 lines of detail for a church over 100 years of age with over 1200 members? Did I understand that correctly? I worked 5.5 years (second career) as administrator for a church of 150-200 regular attendees and maybe an accurate enrollment of 350-425 active/inactive members. The budget was $300,000 to $350,000 approx. They had what I would deem an excellent reporting system of finances. They had monthly administrative meetings set that were rarely interrupted by "acts of God", like bad weather. Each month they received a statement of financial activities (showing actual vs. budgeted income and expenses and year to date accumulated totals--an Income Statement, of sorts. They got a balance sheet, reconciliation of all bank statements report, and cash flow report. Also they received a printout of monthly business transactions.

If the facts are as stated, your church is sorely lacking in data for proper decision-making.

Click here to add your own comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Internal Controls.

If you want to DIY your payroll, I highly recommend you look at using Gusto! It is very user friendly and their support is awesome! Plus they know how to set up and maintain payrolls for churches and nonprofit organizations.

Note: I am a "partner" of Gusto, but as I have told you before ... I never recommend anything that we or our clients have not tried and love =)



Share this page:
Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.