Accounting / financial personnel positions

[debbieg]

We are just getting ready to start using PC for our church. At the same time we are also needing to fill the treasurer's and assistant treasurer's positions (titles may change). I am curious as to what types of positions other churches have to fulfill all the financial duties. In other words, how do you divide up all the financial tasks? I know that many churches have paid office administrators that take care of these things but we don't; these would be volunteer positions.
Any insight you can give would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[NeilZ]

We are just getting ready to start using PC for our church. At the same time we are also needing to fill the treasurer's and assistant treasurer's positions (titles may change). I am curious as to what types of positions other churches have to fulfill all the financial duties. In other words, how do you divide up all the financial tasks? I know that many churches have paid office administrators that take care of these things but we don't; these would be volunteer positions.
Any insight you can give would be appreciated.
Thanks.

What I've seen at my last church is that we had a separation between intake and outgo.

A Financial Secretary took care of all the contribution related stuff, Sunday offerings, special gifts, etc. This person was also responsible for making sure that the teams of counters on Sunday were properly trained, as well as getting out quarterly and end-of-year statements.

Then we had a treasurer who did all the bill paying and associated paperwork, as well as maintaining the normal payroll.

Of course, we also made sure that all checks needed to have two signatures.


These were all volunteer positions. The requirements for Financial Secretary were that the person had been a member of the church for at least two years, and had a good record of stewardship to the church. Our counter's must have been members at least a year, and also had good stewardship records.

The treasurer just needed to have some bookkeeping experience, not necessarily a CPA education; but also had to have been a member for at least 2 years, and showing good stewardship.

We also had an internal auditing committee consisting of church members, one of whom was a full-time CPA or bookkeeper who annually reviewed the books, and an outside auditor who reviewed them on a bi-annual basis.

[debbieg]

Thanks Neil. we do have a financial secretary that enters contribution data and produces the contribution reports. For the other accounting parts, it seems like "best practices" indicate that you should separate functions. In other words, the person that prepares payroll or pays invoices should not be the same person as the one that balances the checkbooks and prepares monthly financial statements. I was wondering if that kind of separation would work out in PC with security/authorizations.

[NeilZ]

Thanks Neil. we do have a financial secretary that enters contribution data and produces the contribution reports. For the other accounting parts, it seems like "best practices" indicate that you should separate functions. In other words, the person that prepares payroll or pays invoices should not be the same person as the one that balances the checkbooks and prepares monthly financial statements. I was wondering if that kind of separation would work out in PC with security/authorizations.

FWIW ... I see no problem with the person doing the payroll and paying bills, also doing the checkbook balancing as long as you have to have two separate signatures on the checks, so that no funds go out without an elder knowing about it.

That said, the way the current Powerchurch authorizations are setup, I'm not sure you can separate the writing of checks, from the preparation of reports and balancing, as both areas I'm fairly sure require ADD/CHANGE permissions.

However, I'm fairly sure the audit trail would track who did what.