Welcome to our free Church Accounting Course, taught by Alex Acree, our in-house nonprofit accounting guru. Sign up to learn some simple, actionable backbone techniques and principles to start tracking your church’s financials.

What Is Church Accounting?

Church accounting, also referred to as fund accounting, is the practice of applying income and expenses to a particular fund in a church. Subsequently, it allows the church to accurately apply and track giving to the proper account that it was intended to fund, such as a new building or a missions trip. The result is a more transparent set of financials for the church, and more happy members who can clearly see where their money is going.

Read a more detailed definition of church accounting for additional information.

About Our Church Accounting Course

In this 5-day email course, we look at:

• What are funds, and why does your church need them?
• What is a chart of accounts, and how does it differ for a church?
• How do you best manage your church’s books?
• How do you track contributions separately from other income?
• What are you required to provide to those who give?
• And more!

Sign up below and we will send you the entire email course for free! You can also try Aplos Church Accounting Software for free to follow along in the course.

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A Note For Churches Using QuickBooks®

If your church is using QuickBooks® to manage its accounting needs, it is missing some critical features and reports. For example, all income goes into one general fund. Therefore, you must use a combination of sub-accounts, classes, external spreadsheets, or even separate bank accounts to get fund-specific data.

QuickBooks® used to have a desktop nonprofit version available that some churches would use. Recently, they’ve discontinued support of the product and are now pushing churches to their QuickBooks® for Nonprofits webpage. However, the problem is it’s not an actual product. That is to say, you will have to duct tape their for-profit tools and reports together to get the fund accounting data your church needs.

For more examples of how QuickBooks® falls short, check out our complete review of QuickBooks® for churches.