Three Steps For Your Best Year of Ministry Ever

pexels-breakingpic-3243

As we start a new year, there’s always talk of New Year’s Resolutions and all those things we want to do better that we forget by February. I hate going to the gym in January because it’s always too busy. I know I can wait a few weeks and most of the resolutioners will give and it will be back to the normal crowd.

With that in mind, the new year does give us an opportunity and a natural time to start something. Here are some ideas you can put in place now that will set you up for your best year of ministry ever!

1. Set measurable and tangible goals.

You may have heard this before, but if you don’t set a destination, you are going nowhere.

The same thing can be said about planning, budgeting, road trips, and even grocery shopping. When you go to the grocery store without a plan (shopping list) its inevitable you will come home with more food and spend more than you anticipated. Chances are also very high you may not grab that one item you went to the store for.

It’s very true when it comes to leading an organization like your church. Without a set plan in place, you have no measurable way to know if you’re heading in the right direction.

Let’s make 2017 count and be the best year of ministry yet.

To start, set some real goals that you can achieve in 2017. Maybe it’s a number of people in attendance, perhaps a number of salvations and baptisms. Perhaps you can set a number for new small groups you’d like to start this year. Whatever it is, plan it out and write it down.

Make your goal stretch you a bit.

Don’t just set a goal that you can achieve within your normal process. We’ll add a bonus point at the end of this section, but for now let’s set our goals just a bit higher than we could achieve without any additional effort.

If you know that your average worship service attendance has grown the past years by 50 people on its own, lets set a stretch goal to make that we grow it by 75 or 100. It will take some effort on your part, but is not beyond the realm of what’s possible.

These goals need to be something that you would stake your ministry on. Think of these goals this way. The goal needs to be important enough to you that if you don’t achieve it, you would consider leaving ministry.

Now I’m not advocating you leaving ministry, but at the same time, you need to give yourself a real consequence for not achieve this goal or it won’t be as meaningful. On the flipside, set yourself up to have a real “prize” should you hit that goal. Maybe it’s a nice dinner out with your wife or perhaps an afternoon off to do something fun with your children. Whatever will motivate you and give you a real sense of accomplishment, plan that out and make sure you stick to it.

BONUS – Set a stretch goal. The goals we have talked about up until now have been achievable, but will take some effort. Put a stretch goal in place. What is a goal you could set for yourself that is the next step beyond your goal? If you set a goal to increase average attendance by 100 people, could your stretch goal be 150? If you wanted to have 10 salvations and baptisms this year, could your stretch goal be 30?

What is that stretch goal for you?

2. Review your systems

If you’ve been around church, or any organization for that matter, long enough you know that we often fall into ruts. We do things for no better reason than that’s the way we’ve always done it. Perhaps you started doing something one way because you had to with the resources at the time, but now you have time to review and do something different.

The New Year is a great time to review the why’s and how’s of what we are doing and see if perhaps there are better ways.

Did you have some volunteers in key positions start in the past year? Are you having periodic reviews with them? Just because they are not employees doesn’t mean that you can’t set a standard and hold them to it.

One thing we see happen way too often is pastor knows they need someone to help in a key area. On the fly, they find someone that CAN do the job and they put them in place without much direction. With the speed of ministry happening and the many hats pastors wear, there wasn’t much time to give clear direction, guidelines, training and job descriptions.

Fast forward 6 months.

Now that leader is doing the job, but they’ve stepped a bit beyond the framework of what you had originally expected them to do. Perhaps that is now causing conflict or put them into a position where it’s not exactly how you wanted things to happen. Since they’ve gone so far without clear direction or expectations, it now makes that conversation a bit awkward to ask them to change.

I say that story because we’ve seen and heard it repeatedly. It’s just one of the many situations and issues that if you have not already faced, you will as you continue in ministry.

Use this time to review your current systems. Think ahead 2-5 years as well. What can we put in place now that will create an atmosphere for growth. (Have you realized that perhaps this step directly relates to step 1 with your goals?? ) The systems you review and implement should have a direct reflection in getting you positioned to reach your goals.

One system that’s always good to review is your bookkeeping and accounting system. Did you know there is an affordable, outsourced option that will scale with your ministry and provide peace of mind for you to never have to worry about finances, at least that the records and information is accurate and complete? If you’d like to know more, schedule a Free, Live demo with me Here.

3. Prepare Routines

Now that you’ve set your goals for the year, and you are confident your systems are as good as they can be for now, let’s work on you.

What can you do yourself this year to do things better than last year?

Regardless of how good you may be at time management, avoiding procrastination, following through with projects, planning ahead, and the list goes on; you can always do a bit better.
Take some time to reflect on your own personal work processes. Do you always feel like you’re making decisions on the fly and having to react to situations? Is there something you could do to be more proactive when it comes to managing you?

Start now.

Here are some ideas for routines you can put in place now.

– Set a time and be intentional about a daily quite time. This should be separate from sermon prep.

– Tackle the email inbox monster. How many emails do you get in a day. What do you do to manage that? Put rules for yourself in place on how you will respond and manage email.

– Facebook and Social Media. How much time do you spend on social media? For all the good things it brings, it can also suck your time away. Will you make some rules for yourself on how much time you will spend on social media?

– Never eat alone. A book for salesmen came out several years ago with that title. Now I know that it’s not realistic to never eat alone, but could you plan to reach out and have lunch with 1 new person or family in your church each week?

– Plan your messages sixth months in advance. How far ahead do you have your message plan scheduled out? Know what you’ll preach on Easter and the weeks before and after?

– Find an app to save stories and articles you’d like to read later. I use Evernote and setup the app on my phone where I can save news articles and posts into a folder there to read later. When I have time where I’m waiting, I have a full folder of articles to keep my busy.

– Your Ideas? I’m curious, do you have any ideas or things you’ve found helpful for you personally? Put them in the comments so we can all share together.

The Procrastinating Pastors Guide to Annual Church Budget Planning

pexels-karolina-grabowska-4386339

We published last week the 3 Reasons Your Church Needs an Annual Budget and had some good responses from pastors that agreed, but wondered what were those next steps to getting their annual budget planned.

Today, we’ll give you 6 steps to Annual Church Budget Planning started. From these simple steps, you’ll have most of the framework in place to have an Annual Church Budget you can use for your ministry.

Step 1 – Review Last Year’s Church Budget

One of the best indicators of how you are spending and allocating your spending for your ministry is to look back at the historical patterns. Review this past year as a Profit and Loss statement. It will show you what you took in (income) and what you spent (expenses).

Look for any patterns. Also, look for any areas that have bigger numbers. When you look at yearly spending as a whole, over the entire period of time, you may get some surprises that you didn’t expect once things are put into perspective. Often, we’ll have churches that don’t realize what seemed like a small amount they were spending weekly, when added up over the year actually becomes a bigger percentage of budget than they expected.

Use these findings to decide if there are areas you need to focus or re-think how you’re allocating funds.
“Be honest here. If you’re spending $100 a week on donuts, and throwing out 2-3 dozen every week, it may be time to analyze or help your donut buyer plan better!”

Step 2 – Project your church year end financial

Ok, now we’re going to get into the nitty gritty of planning.

Since we’re not quite complete with the year, we’ll need to do some projecting of how things will end. The good news is if you’re reading this post in late November when it is published, we only have a few weeks left of the year so the projection will not be too hard. However, since you may be reading this at another time, we’ll show you a quick way to project.

Take your YTD Profit and Loss report for your church. This should show you what has been recorded as income and expenses so far this year. If you’re using Quickbooks, or hopefully our Simplify Church Bookkeeping System, this report will be pretty easy to produce.

If you can, export that report to Excel.

Once you have it in Excel, create a formula as follows =SUM (Col # / # of months in report) * 12. It will end up looking something like this: = SUM(B2/11) * 12

On the cell with your formula, grab the little square at the bottom right of the cell. Click and hold as you pull down so that you are highlighting all the way to the last row of the report. This is a quick way to duplicate the Excel formula you just made for all the rows.

What did we just produce?

This new column will be your End of Year projection on how you will finish the year. From this information, you can now start to project your Church Budget for the new year.

Step 3 – Analyze Year End and Plan the New Year

This is where the real planning begins.

Use the information you just produced and begin to think through your next year. I would re-color or highlight any numbers that are going to stay the same in the next year. This may be things like Rent, Subscriptions, Fees and other expenses that you are committed to or are vital to your ministry that you already know you will use in the next year.

PRO TIP : Add numbers into a third column in Excel so you have:
Column 1 – Real numbers produced from your Church Accounting Software
Column 2 – Projection from the equation you created in Step 2
Column 3 – Numbers we’ll enter as we create the next year’s Annual Church Budget

As you review line by line, think about those expenses that made up the numbers. Do they seem high? How does that line contribute to your ministry? Does that expense help you fulfill the Mission and Vision for your church?

Think through the spending of each line with those questions as a filter and use that to analyze what you’ve done so far.

As you complete your review, use Column 3 to put your final numbers for the next year’s church budget.

Step 4 – Get input from your ministry leadership team and key ministry leaders

Once you have a draft of the budget, which should be completed now in Column 3, share it with your ministry leaders. Get their input and thoughts.

If you have a staff, this is a good time to get their input into their ministry area and their plans for the new year. If we had more time, or had started this sooner, we could have had them draft their ministry area and then plan accordingly. Since we’re at crunch time, we can give each leader a primer for their decisions, and let them have input into the process.

Have a discussion with each leader about their area. Ask the same questions you considered in your preparation for the spending in their ministry area. The key here is to accept their input and get “buy in” from them. Let them feel a part of the process and understand why we have a budget, and how important good financial stewardship is to the success of the ministry.

If there are any adjustments that come up here in those discussions, adjust your budget at this point so you have a good, prepared final draft to present for approval.

Step 5 – Begin the preparations necessary to finalize and approve your annual church budget

If your church by-laws or constitution requires it, this is a good time to start scheduling whatever meeting is going to be appropriate for a vote on accepting this as the budget for your ministry.

It may also be required that a draft of the budget is required to have out for review to your membership as well. Get this information out soon as well so that people can be well informed. Having a well-planned and thoughtful budgeting process can help to alleviate some of the unnecessary headaches and drama that so often plagues ministries in this process.

Step 6 – Review the Church Budget Monthly and Quarterly in the New Year

Now that we’ve spent the time to prepare the budget, let’s really put on ministry on fire and use that planning throughout the year.

Each month or at least each quarter, do a review of your income and expenses against your budget.

PRO TIP: Simplify Church Bookkeeping clients get this report each month for a quick and easy review!

As you move throughout the new year, you will now have a financial road map for your church. You will find ministry decisions become easier (from a financial standpoint anyway) as you are able to look at things and plan against you expected annual church budget.

Hopefully you get a chance to start your budgeting process now. I’ve been in your shoes before and know as a pastor you wear many hats. If you’re like most, those hats that seem daunting, or you’re not exactly sure how to complete are the ones that get put on the back burner.

The steps I laid out here can be completed in just an hour or so. The analysis part make take a bit longer but it will only take a short time to get there. If you need some help, advice on your budget or want to get this off your plate completely by using our Simplify Church Bookkeeping System, Schedule a demo today.

Hey! We’re offering a webinar on Wednesday December 7, 2016 where we will go through these steps and I’ll show you exactly the steps I go through to create church budgets. If you’re interested, Register Here!

3 Reasons Your Church Needs an Annual Church Budget

pexels-pixabay-265087

It’s that time of year again when it’s time to start planning and finalizing your budget for the upcoming year. (assuming you’re on a Jan-Dec Fiscal year)

Fundamentally, your budget is nothing more than a spending guide. A roadmap, so to speak, on how you will allocate your spending for the upcoming ministry year. For ministries, your budget is one more tool you can use to quantify your ministry effectiveness. This is not a post about numbers, as some get all antsy when people start talking about ministry and numbers, but we must have some areas of ministry we can track. If you can measure it, we can track it.

So where do we start?

I am amazed by how many churches come to us with no budget. I guess the same can be said for many households that don’t adhere to a budget as well. (I’ll admit I’m not the best at tracking household expenses to a budget as well)

A comprehensive budget is crucial for your ministry.

Here are three reasons why your church needs a budget for the next step of growth.

1. A Budget Will Make Ministry Decisions Easier

We’ve all been there in ministry. A new opportunity comes up, someone brings up and idea, or an unexpected expense comes out of no-where. All three have a unique set of responses and decisions that need to be made. As you’re probably well aware, ministry can cost money. In many cases, churches have to do more with less.

Ministries are organic and in turn, always growing … Hopefully.

In that growth, there are always new opportunities and ideas that present themselves. Many times, these opportunities come with a cost.

Here’s what a church budget does:

– It answers questions about the mission and vision of your church.

– It sets clear direction on where the money will be spent and where the priorities of the church reside.

– It provides a filter for making spending decisions that may come up throughout the year.

– It provides a measure and benchmark to track the financial health of the organization

– It sets a standard to reflect and review throughout the year to make future ministry decisions.

2. A Budget will Give Donors Trust In Giving

Let’s face it. Churches are completely dependent on the faithfulness of donors.

Unfortunately, not everyone will be faithful to what God has directed about giving. While that fact opens up great doors for ministry discussions to happen, it still doesn’t put money in the bank. Further, money is one of those areas that people don’t want to talk about, don’t want to discuss and especially in churches, its almost a taboo subject.

We’re not here for a discussion on Biblical Stewardship, but we can talk about positioning your church and ministry to reduce the number of excuses people can have.

We’ll already concede that many people are just flat out being unfaithful with their lack of giving to their church. That being said, we can move on to the secondary objections that people have for church donations.

One of those objections, whether voiced or not, is that the donor doesn’t trust the way money will be managed within the church. Just ask around to people that have been in church life long enough and ask about check approvals in business meetings. #SMH.

Trust is another big issue that we’ve written about in the blog post about church giving There’s Freedom in Trust so read that, I’ll save the room here.

Having a specified budget in place will help donors know how their money will be used. It gives the giver confidence that the money they are giving will be used wisely.

I was mentored early on in ministry by my pastor who made sure to emphasize with me the regard he holds for the resources given to the church. He stressed that I remember that the money we were given was often a sacrifice for the individual who gave. We should treat every dollar in much the same way. We are making light of their sacrifice when we don’t regard every spending decision with that thought.

We should treat every dollar spent remembering that the donor sacrificed to provide that resource to the church.

Having a budget in place, that can be shared with donors, is a security blanket so they can know their money will be used with wise stewardship decisions. When people have trust that their money will be used wisely, they will be more inclined to give above and beyond and be excited about giving.

3. A Budget Provides Direction for your Ministry

Ministry often moves fast.

If you’re like most growing churches, things will look different next month than they do now and most certainly, next quarter they will look different.

In a growing church, there are things that will come up throughout the year that will change what you’re doing in ministry. Being aware and cognizant of those changes is key to leading your church through that growth.

So how does that relate to your budget?

Your budget is a living document that allows you to make decisions throughout the year.

Think of it as the proverbial road map.

As you are navigating through the inevitable changes of a growing church, the budget becomes a guiding document (from a financial standpoint) for your to make decisions and see how the church may be affected financially. Now there are many other things that can play into that, but having a budget is a great way of knowing where you stand at any point in the year against your plan.

At any time in the year, you should be within 30 days of knowing where you stand actual vs. budget. If this is not a report you’re seeing currently, Contact Us and let us show you how you can get that report in an ongoing basis.

Your Church Budget is CRUCIAL to ministry

As you can see, having a budget in place for your church is crucial. In the many pastors we talk to all around the country we find this is often an overlooked area in ministry. If you’re having trouble putting together a budget, or if you want to know that you’re using the best practices to put together your budget, let us know and we’ll provide some resources and help for you.

New Live Chat Support Option

The SimplifyChurch Bookkeeping Portal now offers live chat support.

Have a question or need advice on how to use the system? Click the orange box in the bottom right corner and you will be connected with someone from our team who can help you via live chat.

After Hours?

You will have the option to create a support ticket that we will respond to as soon as possible.

Just one more way we’re helping you Simplify Church.

Does the Overtime Law Affect Pastors?

pexels-andrea-piacquadio-3760810

The new overtime law that goes into effect December 1, 2016 will require many churches to review how they are managing their staff. Churches are not exempt from the New Overtime Law and it will have affect the way employees are compensated.

One big question we’re getting Does the New Overtime Law Affect Pastors?

The short answer is NO!

While that maybe is not definitive, all the initial considerations are showing that Ministerial (clergy) Employees will not be affected because of the ministerial exemption that exists in the FLSA. Furthermore, we can also conclude that even with no specific comment about pastors in the new law, their is a “duties test”put out by the Department of Labor that would provide job duties that would exempt an employee from the New Overtime Law. Since most pastors serve as the leader of their ministry or organization, it may be fair to determine that they would be exempt as an “Executive, Administrative or Professional” employee.

To view for your own knowledge, Ministers are considered exempt from any FLSA coverage which can be viewed on Table 3-1 of the final regulations which lists “clergy and religious workers” as one of the six categories of “Occupations Exempt from FLSA’s Overtime Provisions.” In plain English, pastors are not subject to minimum wage or overtime requirements of the FLSA. This would encompass people that function in a “spiritual/pastoral” function and not only through ordination. You can see that in the DOL Final Report on page 7 of the .pdf

The New Overtime Law for Churches

The new overtime law raises the minimum salary level for which a salaried employee must be compensated if they worked more than 40 hours per week. The former salary level was $23,600 per year which has now been raised to $47,476. Basically, anyone earning less than that amount (including salary, bonuses & commissions) is eligible for overtime pay.

What Does The New Overtime Law Mean for Pastors?

In general, pastors compensation will not be affected as they perform their duties as a minister for the church. Since they are exempted from FLSA under the ministerial exemption, they are not eligible for overtime pay.

4 Things Your Church Can Do To Prepare For The New Overtime Rule?

1. Consult legal advice. We’ll do our best to give you the facts, but your situation may be fact dependent on your current organization. You should view this article as legal advice.
2. Adjust pastor job descriptions with the following line: ” Religious Worker Not Covered By FLSA, Not Entitled to Overtime or Minimum Wage”
3. Review your church employment policies – it’s always good to do this periodically to make sure everything is up to date and current. Don’t let this document get out of date as your church grows.
4. Review your other employees to see if they may be affected by the new law – Here’s another article we wrote on how the new Overtime Law Will Affect Churches

As always, our goal is to help your church be freed up to focus on ministry. This stuff can get very complex and confusing and pull you away from focusing on your Church Mission and Vision. Let us partner and help you manage your payroll and accounting so you can focus on ministry. If you’d like to know more about how we help churches manage these parts of ministries, Get In Touch With Us.

How the New Overtime Law Will Affect Your Church

pexels-pixabay-39396

Here’s what you need to know about the New Overtime Law for Churches

There is a lot of buzz right now as people are talking (sometimes freaking out!) about the New Overtime Law that goes into affect this December 1, 2016. There is a lot of chatter out there about what this means and how it will affect your organization and we’ll deal specifically with how this affects your church.

The new overtime law was put in place as an effort for the Government to require employers to pay what they consider “fair wage”. I will try my best to avoid political undertones and cynicism but forgive me if some comes through. I’m a skeptic of the value of this idea to say the least.

Under the new law, anyone making less than $47,476 per year regardless of white collar, blue collar, salary or hourly will need to be eligible for overtime pay. (In most cases, hourly employees were already entitled to overtime pay)

The intent of the law is to increase the number of people who qualify for overtime pay. For an illustration, this will greatly impact Restaurant Managers who work long hours and previously were paid a set salary. Overtime was just part of the gig.

The New Overtime Law For Churches

For our purposes here, we’ll assume your church is paying an Ordained Pastor, has a part time Ministry Assistant paid a set salary and an hourly custodian.

For paying your pastor, they will not be affected by the new law. Pastors are Clergy and not covered by the FLSA under the ministerial exemption from Labor Laws. What this means is that they are not subject to minimum wage concerns, nor do they benefit from the FLSA new Overtime Rules. We won’t get into the definition of Clergy according to FLSA or the IRS but in almost every case, the pastor will not be affected.

For NON-CLERGY employees, you must now increase the amount of documentation you are keeping. In that documentation, you will need to keep record that:
– the employee is paid at least your local/state minimum wage
– the employee did not qualify for overtime pay during each and every pay period (basically showing they did not work more than 40 hours/week)

What Happens If Our Church Doesn’t Follow The New Overtime Law?

The repercussions are pretty severe for an employer (your church) that doesn’t comply with the new law.

1. An employee may be entitled to unpaid back wages for “Off the Clock” volunteer work
1. We all know that ministry has to happen and in many cases, the Paid Staff are working when ministry happens. Many times they also volunteer for other ministries not directly related to their position. Unfortunately, since they are an employee and the church is an employer, there will not be a clear distinction between duties on and off the clock. This further provides reasoning for very clear and accurate time records. Also, take the additional step to add into the Employee Agreement or Offer Letter that describes their job and clearly states that any volunteer activities within the church are non-compensated.

2. The Fines can be Expensive!
1. Failure to comply can result in “Liquidated Damages” of two times unpaid wages and overtime assessed.

How Can Your Church Prepare For The New Overtime Law?

1. Make sure you employee documentation is clear, accurate and up to date. This should specify clergy and non-clergy roles as well as job descriptions.

2. Consider offering Comp-Time to your ministry staff.
Of course ministry has to happen, and there are times when people will put in long hours. Consider adding in comp time to the schedule and document those hours so you can be sure you’re avoiding anyone working over 40 hours per week. This may require giving an afternoon off to your secretarial staff to keep their total hours down.

3. Put a time system in place to track your Non-Clergy staff. Even if they are salary this should be done. The analysis may also help in future hiring decisions!

4. Use a professional Payroll System like ours to be sure people are paid accurately and the documentation is in place.

5 Church Financial Reports and Metrics Every Pastor Needs Regularly

five financial metrics every pastor needs to know

Pastors and Church finances are one of those issues that can spark debates in churches. A myth has grown in our church that the pastor should not do anything with the church finances. While I’ll agree, the pastor should be at arms length between the actual handling of the finances, he still needs to be very much aware of what’s going on. One way to know the health of the church is to watch for giving and spending trends in the church.

At the very least, every pastor should view and analyze these 5 Church Financial Reports on a regular basis.

1. Church Statement of Accounts/ Profit & Loss

The most fundamental report a pastor should be taking a look at monthly. At a fundamental level, this provides insight into how much was money was deposited in the previous month, and portrays that against how much money was spent. Those totals are subtracted to get either a positive or negative number. Read this post if you’re curious about if a church can have net income.

“Don’t fret initially at the bottom line number. It is not an exact reflection of cash flow as deposits and expenses may be outside the date range. The bottom line of this report should be considered over a longer term to get real insight into trends that may be developing”

This report should be reviewed in month’s comparison so you can see trending spending by budget line. This will give you some insight into where your money is being allocated. You can also balance a level of detail between parent budget lines and child budget lines. (I don’t mean adult and children ministries here).

What I mean is the parent budget line of Children’s Ministry may tell you enough or you might want more insight and dive into the child line of that budget to see how much you spent on Cookies for Preschoolers out of that budget line. There is a definite balance on the level of detail you should be watching.

2. Church Budget Comparison

This is probably the most important report to consider as a pastor.

If you don’t have a budget (a plan) on how to use the monetary resources of your church, you have no way to make proper spending decisions. For Church Plants and churches with limited income, a budget is CRUCIAL!

While this report is very important, we need to have a quick understanding of what your budget actually is. Many churches put too much weight on the budget, or think that it is some sort of a legally binding document. While your Constitution or By-Laws may require you to operate on a budget, that budget in itself is merely a guide or spending plan. It details what you will spend and how you will use the church resources to fulfill your mission and vision

A Budget Comparison report will help you to analyze spending actual vs. planned.

You can look at this report on a monthly basis or create for longer periods of time. Both ways will give you insight into how money is being spent in actuality verse what you may have expected or planned.

Many churches and pastors cringe at the idea of having to prepare and develop a budget. In most cases, the hesitancy is more over not exactly knowing how to prepare the budget instead of it really being a big deal.

“We will be launching a Budget Building System in August 2016, click here if you want to be one of the first to know when it releases”

Properly managing you spending against your budget will help you to analyze and be sure you’re spending money exactly where you planned. Regardless of your budget analysis, you should take these ideas into account when preparing your church budget. For ideas about church budgeting on faith, spending on reason, click here for our post on that.

3. Church Giving Trend

While many don’t like to talk about it, money in the church is often a very crucial aspect to ministry.

For many pastors, the idea of managing money makes their eyes glaze over. For others, they have fallen victim to the myth that a pastor should not know about the church finances (blog link here).

Now we could make an argument that there is a level of separation the pastor needs between the finances and himself, in most cases, the senior pastor will be the one held liable or have the perceived blame for financial problems in the church.

As a pastor, you should know your giving trends. You need to have an idea of the amount of average weekly deposit, your monthly average income and the trend for the quarter. You should also track this each quarter through the year so you can find the trends and also lulls in giving months. Remember, summer is always a down giving time so knowing the actual numbers will help you prepare for the summer giving lull. If you’ve been around long enough, track those numbers by comparison to previous years. That way, you’ll see if you’re on a growth or decline trend in your giving.

4. Giving per unit metric

This is a metric that gets tossed around a lot, and there are quite a few different opinions on specifics but we’ll dive into a few strategies here. We’ll discuss real quick how to use this number, not necessarily any goals or benchmarks that you should have. In many cases, this is a planning and review measurement.

Take your total giving each week and divide that by the number of giving units. You can define giving unit on your own, but in most cases this is (total attendance – children / 2 (accounting for husband & wife together)) You can decide on your own measure here, just be sure you’re consistent so you can get accurate trends.

How to analyze?

This metric will help you make budgeting and spending decisions. It will also give you an idea of the generosity health of your congregation. When you know the giving per unit, you can then use that to forecast budget needs as your attendance grows.

$40 per unit * 100 people means you should expect $4,000 per week income or $208,000 per year. This will help you start your budgeting planning on income expectations.

Once you have the benchmark, if you watch that number month over month, you can get a pulse of giving in your congregation.

From our research, a health church average per unit amount is in the $40 range.

There are a ton of variables that could affect this number (newer believers, seasonality, angry members :), etc.) It’s not a hard fast measure but simply a measure to keep you in the know.

5. Individual Giving Changes

OK. I’ll say it. A pastor SHOULD know what individuals give in the church.

Now before you tar and feather me and call me a heretic, hear me out.

Giving is a spiritual discipline. As a person’s pastor, accountable for their spiritual development, how can you speak into a person’s life or hold them spiritually accountable if you don’t know the value of giving in their lives?

Now, you probably don’t need to collect a W-2 and do the math to determine if they are giving exactly 10%, In acutality that would be really creepy!

You probably don’t even need to know the actual number but you should know whether or not they are a giver. You can even know whether or not they fall into the average number of giving per unit.

If you don’t feel comfortable knowing the numbers, or even if they are a giver, have someone who does know get you a report of anyone whose giving has changed 15% in either direction in the previous quarter or 6 months. This will give you a good indication of a life change.

A word of advice. You should absolutely know whether or not your staff and key leaders are givers. Your key leaders and staff need to be stakeholders in the ministry.

BONUS!

Here’s a bonus report you should follow that isn’t necessarily a financial report, but will play a vital part in many of your decisions.

You need to follow an attendance report. We hear all the time that pastor’s shouldn’t be concerned about numbers and that is completely bogus. If you don’t have numbers to measure, you are relying on feelings and assumptions to make decisions and that is not a good way to do things.

Keep track of your average weekly attendance. Track numbers of volunteers each week as well. Also, track that in a monthly average so you can keep an eye on trends.

If you haven’t figured out yet, a key part of managing your church is watching for trends. Over time, trends in income, expenses, giving and attendance will develop for your church. Knowing these trends will help you better manage your ministry, lead your team and shepherd the church toward spiritual growth.

If you want to know more about how many of these reports can be developed for you without burdening a volunteer or taking your valuable time, get in touch with us and we’ll show you how our Church Bookkeeping System can help you better track and manage your church.

Budget on Faith, Spend on Reason

Budget on faith, spend on reason

For many churches, we are coming into the season when it is time to start planning for the upcoming year. That planning includes setting a budget on how to allocate the resources God has provided the church.

No church should be operating without a budget. Even churches that think they are too small or don’t have enough income should still have a budget. Actually, some of the smallest churches should budget more as money is scarce, and it’ll provide key analysis for requesting assistance should that be necessary.

A trend we have found in most churches is that the budget is handled in a faithless manner. We preach about faith, tell the folks in the pews to live by faith, and have every assurance that God will provide to those who are faithful. Yet, we budget on reality without allowing God to intervene.

The budget is looked at from last years numbers, adding in a percentage for inflation or cost of living increases, but nothing more added for God to move in the upcoming year, almost as if God’s provision is an afterthought or unplanned expectation.

Now I can definitely understand being frugal and the need to be practical in our planning. However, what are we saying about God’s faithfulness by not raising or exceeding our expectations

Let’s try something new for the upcoming budget year. Let’s try budgeting with faith that God will provide for something extraordinary. Let’s budget with the same level of faith we are preaching from the pulpit.

Secondly, when you have your faith budget in place, spend your budget line items on reason. Plan to spend your budget lines at 80%. Spend reasonably the money that needs to be spent, but nothing more. I think you’ll be amazed at how God will provide for your church when you don’t limit God.

By spending on reason, (what you have available now) and being frugal in spending, you will be able to better maintain cash flow.

Your congregation will also be more inclined to give to a larger budget. Now getting people to understand and be faithful givers is a whole other topic, but if done correctly, a faithful budget goal will spur your congregation to have faith in giving.

<strong>When was the last time you had a faith increase in your annual budget?</strong>

!!! Transaction Details Display Bug

05-17-2016 – RESOLVED – this issue has been resolved, sorry again for any inconvenience.

 

05-17-2016 – there is an issue currently in the portal where the transaction display pop-up is not displaying correctly for both expenses and deposits.

When you enter a request, then click to add details, the window that shows will have an area that is doubled up.

Our team has been notified and we will get this fixed ASAP.

In the meantime, transactions can still be processed and requested.  You may have to enter the amount into both input lines, but it will not double the amount.

We will update here once the issue has been resolved.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

Is Your Church Financially Healthy?

We’ll Show You HOW To Find Out And     WHY It Matters In This Free Guide!

It’s time to change the way we talk about giving in church!