You might need more functionality than QuickBooks Premier Plus provides as your church grows. Your church's growing needs will include the ability to manage volunteers, events, allow online giving and run email campaigns.
Internal controls are a key area where churches are at risk. Having someone outside of the financial system reconciling your bank accounts, tracking, and verifying your deposits and checks means there is a second set of eyes going over all of your systems, increasing the safeguarding of your congregation’s resources.
We are passionate about church bookkeeping. However, we enjoy maintaining books for small charities and churches. We see a lot of mistakes made in bookkeeping, which could have been avoided had the bookkeeper known the right way to do it.
You can decide whether you want to pay an independent contractor or an employee if you are unsure.
To avoid making a mistake in church bookkeeping, you should carefully examine each person who is being paid for a service. The IRS guidelines (link to the Misclassification article), will help you determine whether they should be classified either as an employee with proper payroll tax withholding and matching, or as an independent contractor.
While mistakes in church bookkeeping are not uncommon, there are steps that you can take to avoid them.
You should also be able to view your bank balance, see which funds are designated and restricted, and what amount is available to keep the lights lit.
How To Manage Church Records
Identify The Church Records That You're Going To Manage. Based on your local state laws you will need to figure out what records are imperative to keep. ...
Implement A Retention Schedule. ...
Establish Retention And Destruction Policies.
The biblical pattern shows without question that the pastor should be involved in the oversight of the church's finances, however, Scripture also prescribes the attitude and actions of the pastor to avoid disqualification of influence and trust.
Bookkeepers maintain the financial records of the church that includes income and expense records. They are supposed to keep records of the dates and amount of every transaction of the church.
Working in church accounting, you share the same responsibilities as an accountant in any other organization. You record expenses, track contributions made by the congregation, and monitor spending on various programs. Your duties center around bookkeeping, documenting and controlling finances for a church.