Considering PC, have Payables questions

[davidrea]

Small (150) church, 1 admin, part time CPA service. Considering PC, probably using some outside bookkeeping service. One issue is payables. Using bill.com today, heavy reliance on ACH or bill.com printing checks. Want to know how (using PC), you coordinate entering manual checks (for accounting purposes) with bill payments via bank bill pay or other payment services. How do you reconcile, ,maintain internal controls, etc. Goal is to NOT print checks in house but have 'smooth' process that isn't subseptiible to error, theft. Solution doesn't need to keep bill.com, but would be very interested if someone is using bill.com with PC and would be willing to talk.

David Rea
Grace Church

[NeilZ]

Small (150) church, 1 admin, part time CPA service. Considering PC, probably using some outside bookkeeping service. One issue is payables. Using bill.com today, heavy reliance on ACH or bill.com printing checks. Want to know how (using PC), you coordinate entering manual checks (for accounting purposes) with bill payments via bank bill pay or other payment services. How do you reconcile, ,maintain internal controls, etc. Goal is to NOT print checks in house but have 'smooth' process that isn't subseptiible to error, theft. Solution doesn't need to keep bill.com, but would be very interested if someone is using bill.com with PC and would be willing to talk.

David Rea
Grace Church

Handling EFT payments made via online banking, etc is done by using the 'Maintain Manual Check' function. You would have your normal vendors setup in the system. If payments for the vendor are from the same expense account each month, such as utilities, you would have that setup in the vendor record, and the 'manual check' would have those accounts automatically entered.

It does involve some additional data entry, but what I did at a previous church was to enter the manual checks, and before posting them to Funds Accounting, print off the Open (unposted) items report. Then I'd go online and enter those payments in the online bank payment function.

In reality, it worked quite well, and was very easy to do.

What I would do is download the Free Demo to get an idea of how that would work. That said, I was the only admin and did the accounting using PCPlus. The contributions were entered on Sunday by a set of volunteers who would enter the donations, and drop them in our bank's overnight depository.
In this way, the income and outgo was kept separate.

We also had our entire membership data entered into PC Plus thus eliminating any issues with incorrect addresses using a separate system for membership, and one for contributions.

Does this help?

PS: I don't classify any church of 150 as small, that is the average church membership in the US.

[davidrea]

Thanks Neil,

Yes it does help. After entering the payment info on the bank's online system, at what point did you post the payment? When it was actually paid? I assume you do this for each payment individually as each might have different payment dates.

David Rea

[NeilZ]

Thanks Neil,

Yes it does help. After entering the payment info on the bank's online system, at what point did you post the payment? When it was actually paid? I assume you do this for each payment individually as each might have different payment dates.

David Rea

I would treat it as any check I would write for payment. I enter it in PC on the 1st, have it setup to pay online on the 1st, but usually there's a delay for processing, etc at the bank, but I would post once I entered at the bank.

I looked at it this way, I committed the funds for payment on the 1st, they are no longer available to me, and thus as a cash based system, the system is up to date. Even if they are not cleared at the bank, you only reconcile on the bank statement what has cleared, nothing else.