What is a Statement of Activity?
A Statement of Activity (also known as an Income Statement or Profit and Loss Statement) for a church is a financial report that shows the church’s income and expenses for a specific period of time,…
Bookkeeping
Fixed Asset Register 101
In our last blog post we mentioned keeping a fixed asset register off-site. You can come up with your own qualifications for your organization but typically anything that cost over $1,000 and has over a…
5 Bookkeeping Best Practices for Churches
We are halfway through the year already! With summers typically being a slower time of year for churches (after VBS is over of course), now might be a great time to assess your churches…
Budgeting: Where do We Start?
Budgeting is about estimating your expectations of income and expense for a given period of time. It is a plan of operations based on the budget that you created. It is actually a ‘living’ document…
Move from Excel to Xero Accounting Software
A great blog from Xero – our accounting platform of choice. Small businesses often start out using Excel – but that’s only doable up until a point. Like every teenager eventually becomes an adult, your…
What is stewardship?
Well Done Good and Faithful Servant When you think of stewardship, what comes to mind? For your church, it is probably thinking about using the resources – financial, human and material – well and to…
No time like the present…
I have been “preaching” about working smarter not harder for several years now. To me, this means implementing automated processes when possible to ensure the mundane administrative tasks are taken care of as efficiently, securely…
Working Remotely
GoodBooks works entirely remotely and so we’ve had years of experience now doing so. I wanted to mention here some of the ways that we simplify and streamline accounting to do so: Set up every…
Record Retention Policy
Almost every organization has asked us at one time or another, “how long do we have to keep our documents?” Proper maintenance of your historical records and documents is very important to protect…
Pastor Housing Allowance
All ordained, licensed or commissioned, whether the minister is living in a parsonage, a rental home, or a home they have purchased. This allowance is subject to SECA tax but is excluded from federal…