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?

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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.

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