This was from a training that I did in the Fall of 2019 for United Methodist churches in Southeastern South Dakota. While most finance committees focus on reviewing reports and looking at cutting expenses, some are making a huge impact in helping their churches succeed. They are growing the church’s income, improving operations/decision making, and…
Author: Jeff Pospisil
How can you handle donor-restricted funds in QuickBooks?
I’m still working in my 30-day free trial of Non-Profit QuickBooks Online. One of the first challenges I’ve helped churches work through is how you handle all those church funds. I’ve seen two good solutions: 1)Track it all in the Equity section or 2)Track it in Equity AND Other Income. I show you this in…
How do you track donations in QuickBooks?
Churches might avoid QuickBooks because they think they will need a separate system to track donations. Most church accounting programs have a module for accounting and a separate module for keeping the giving records. For years, the rumor was that you could track giving records in QuickBooks…and that rumor is true! I played around in…
Is QuickBooks a good idea for churches?
Church treasurers rarely change. If you’re elected church treasurer, that’s pretty much a life sentence. Church treasurers are usually very constant and reliable people so chances are, once they find out what works best for them, it isn’t changing until the end of their life sentence. So, when there is a change in treasurers, a…
Unrestricted, Designated, and Restricted Gifts
Are donor-restricted gifts a blessing or a curse? Often they are a blessing…especially when the church’s leadership is trying to raise money for a cause or project. A lot of churches take special offerings for specific missions (e.g. Mission of the Month). Others raise money for capital projects or to retire debt. But what about…
How can we use the proceeds from selling the parsonage?
With the decline of the mainline church, churches are filling pulpits in creative ways because they can no longer afford a full-time pastor. They are sharing pastors…either with other churches or with other employers (i.e. co-vocational or bi-vocational). What do you do if you find yourself with an empty parsonage? Can you sell it? Should…
The Step Chart on Steroids
The old “Grow One” Step Chart has been around for a long time. A number of churches have distributed a chart similar to this one during their pledge card or stewardship drive. The Step Chart actually was very convicting to me and led me to start tithing. The Step Chart is great for personally conviction,…