How to Prevent Church Fraud 1: The Audit

Unfortunately sometimes people steal from the church. Most often this happens when normally good people are put in bad positions. Maybe they have a big medical bill or their spouse lost their job. Then, if the church has little to no internal controls, they may attempt to “borrow” from the church honestly hoping to pay it back later.

Your internal controls can help prevent good people from acting on bad temptations. It will also help catch people just looking to steal.

In this post, I share with you the #1 thing a church can do to prevent (not detect) fraud.

How to enter your budget into QuickBooks Online

This is a busy time of year for church treasurers. You’re trying to wrap up 2023 (giving statements, W-2’s, and 1099’s) plus there are some things you need to do in order to get setup for 2024. One of those things is entering your budget into the accounting system.

In the video, I walk you through the process of either importing a spreadsheet or manually entering in a budget in QuickBooks Online.

How to Mail Merge, Email Merge, and Adobe Merge

For church and nonprofit communications, Mail Merge with Microsoft Word and Excel is a powerful tool. It makes it possible to customize your mass communications (email, paper, or both).

The example I give in the video is for church donor statements, but I’ve used this for all kinds of financial communications. You don’t always need fancy software to put out fancy communications.