Questions a church board will ask
Common questions
Do you take over control of our money?
No. Your church stays in charge. The bank accounts, the QuickBooks file, and the records stay in your church's name. You can turn my access off any time.
We never touch the cash. Your counters count and deposit the offering. We record it and match it to the bank.
We enter and pay the bills, so they get paid on time. If your church wants its own signers on the checks, we can set it up that way. Either way, your council sees every payment in the monthly report.
Everything is written down. You get written steps for your books, so the work never depends on one person's memory, including mine.
Do we have to replace our treasurer?
No. Some churches keep a treasurer as the officer who signs off and reports to the council, and hand the bookkeeping to me. That treasurer's job gets a lot smaller and a lot more pleasant.
Other churches use this to fill a seat nobody will take. Either works. Your bylaws and your denomination's rules decide who has to hold the title. I fit around that.
What if our books are a mess?
That's normal. Plenty of churches are behind. A treasurer left, the QuickBooks file hasn't been reconciled in a year, or the funds have never really been tracked.
Cleanup is scoped up front. I look at where things stand, tell you what it will take to bring the books current, and quote it as its own project before the monthly fee starts. You will not get a surprise bill for it.
Do you have to be here in person?
No. Most of the work happens remotely through bank feeds, your online giving platform, and QuickBooks. Bills come to one email address, and documents move by email or a shared folder.
I'm based in New Cumberland, PA, and I work with churches anywhere in the U.S. If you're in central Pennsylvania, I'm glad to stop by in person too, for onboarding, a finance committee meeting, budget season, or a handoff with the outgoing treasurer.
How do we switch?
We start with the free 20-minute church books checkup. If it's a fit, you get a written scope and a flat quote. Then we connect your bank and giving platforms to QuickBooks, set up or clean up the QuickBooks file, and meet once with your current treasurer and your counters. A few weeks later the first monthly report lands, and from there it just runs.
We use QuickBooks Online, and your church owns the file and the data; if you're on something else, we do the move. See the full onboarding path.
The part that matters most
A church's money is not one pile
It's a general fund, a building fund, memorial gifts, missions. Money given for a purpose has to stay with that purpose. I tag every dollar to a fund when it's recorded, and every fund keeps its own balance. So the council can see what's actually free to spend.
Same bank balance, kept as one pile
The bank balance is right. It just isn't the number the council needs.
Same bank balance, kept by fund
Sample figures. The point is the shape of the report, not the amounts.
Next step
Start with a free 20-minute church books checkup
We'll talk about how your church handles its books today, what's working, and what's not. You'll leave with at least one thing you can fix, whether you hire us or not.
- Bring whoever needs to be there: the pastor, the treasurer, the finance chair.
- No sales pitch. I mostly want to hear how your church handles its books.
- If we're not the right fit, I'll say so and point you somewhere useful.