Outsource Accounting?`

[Ronz]

Our church is considering outsourcing the accounting and payroll to an accounting firm because of the amount of work required to keep up with accounting. Our Treasurer is paid half time, but works about 3/4 time for our small 350 member church. Using an accouting firm would releive us of the burden of the accounting. We currently use PowerChurch for membership, contributions, payroll, accounts payable, and accounting.

Is there anyone out there using an accounting firm to do the accounting and payroll? Do they do the contributions too? If so, how to they get membership data needed for contributions? If not, how do they get the contribution data? Are reports adequate? I would think those would be problematic because an accounting firm probably would not use PowerChurch.

Ron Zastovnik
Memorial United Methodist Church
Clovis, CA

[NeilZ]

Our church is considering outsourcing the accounting and payroll to an accounting firm because of the amount of work required to keep up with accounting. Our Treasurer is paid half time, but works about 3/4 time for our small 350 member church. Using an accouting firm would releive us of the burden of the accounting. We currently use PowerChurch for membership, contributions, payroll, accounts payable, and accounting.

Is there anyone out there using an accounting firm to do the accounting and payroll? Do they do the contributions too? If so, how to they get membership data needed for contributions? If not, how do they get the contribution data? Are reports adequate? I would think those would be problematic because an accounting firm probably would not use PowerChurch.

Ron Zastovnik
Memorial United Methodist Church
Clovis, CA

FWIW ... If you're going to outsource the accounting, I would keep the Contributions in-house, (the counting, data entry into Powerchurch, and Contribution Statement printing), and just give the accounting firm the weekly Posting Summary which you can get when you Post Contributions, along with the deposit slip for the week.

[Zaphod]

It should be noted that the license for PowerChurch allows you to give a copy of the software to your accountant to use in this scenario. Then, if you do what Neil suggested, you can actually send them a file with the contributions entries that they can then import into Fund Accounting. They can also provide you with an Accounting backup so you can have the accounting information inhouse too, without hurting your other data.

[devina]

How is this different from the cash basis of accounting? Why is accrual accounting important? Nonprofit organizations are required to produce financial statements based on the accrual method of accounting.

[NeilZ]

How is this different from the cash basis of accounting? Why is accrual accounting important? Nonprofit organizations are required to produce financial statements based on the accrual method of accounting.

Um, I do not believe your last statement is correct.