I’m Alex Acree, head of Customer Success at Aplos. My goal for this church accounting course is to provide you with some backbone techniques and principals to start tracking your church’s financials while keeping them as actionable and succinct as possible.
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 they were intended to fund (for example a new building or 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 being applied to.
For a more detailed definition of church accounting, please refer to this article.
Churches Using QuickBooks
If your church is using QuickBooks to manage their accounting needs, they are missing some critical features and reports. For example, income is dropped 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 nonprofit version available on desktop 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 that it’s not an actual product. That is to say, you’ll be required 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.
About Our Church Accounting Course
In this 5-day email course, we look at:
- What are funds, and why do you need them?
- What is a chart of accounts, and how does it differ from a church?
- How best to manage your church’s books
- How do you track contributions separate from other income?
- What are you required to provide to donors?
- And more!
You can try Aplos Church Accounting Software for free to follow along in the course. Sign up below and we will send you the entire email course for free!
1 comment
Thanks