Churches should have their finances organized in an accessible format that makes it easy to make the right decisions. If you’re still organizing your church finances with pen and paper, you’re asking for big trouble. It’s time to step up your game and take advantage of accounting templates and software.
The best church budget software or spreadsheets should be easy to read, format, understand, and use. Spreadsheets should make it simple for the treasurer to know where all the money goes and if it is being wasted.
When managing a church ministry, there are numerous expenses that need to be addressed. Unfortunately, most people responsible for overseeing budget information fail to prepare it in the proper format. Without an accounting format budget template, it is easy to mismanage your church accounting and overburden the congregation with heavy monetary demands. These raise concerns and impede worship within your church.
You can spend your time and money more productively online by using a free, professional church accounting budget template format that will help you keep a close watch on where each dollar goes. There are plenty of free church accounting budget template downloads in both Excel and PDF formats available online—and some of them even look fancy.
We found the best Excel workbook and PDF format accounting templates you can try for free to make your church budget management simpler and more streamlined. Each template is available both online and offline, which means they’re easy to use whether your computer is connected to the internet or not.
The accounting templates are designed to assist you in the process of maintaining your financial records and organizing church money. They make it easy for you to access accounting spreadsheets on a computer or mobile device, as well as print them out.
Full Spreadsheet Template for Church Accounting
This automated Excel spreadsheet is the best free church accounting template you’ll find online. This spreadsheet has all of the basic accounting functionality that expensive accounting software offers. While it can’t do all of your work for you, and it’s no replacement for a qualified accountant or treasurer overseeing your finances, you can get by without paying for software if your church budget doesn’t allow for a computer system and software upgrade right now.
With this free church accounting spreadsheet, you have a master general ledger template duplicated for each month. The other reports in the Excel workbook will populate automatically so you don’t have to do any other manual data entry.
After every three monthly general ledger tabs and statement of activity tabs, there are quarterly statements of activity. At the end of the workbook, there’s a running year-to-date report that populates as you go. Once you fill out the whole workbook for the year, simply save a copy for your records, empty out the data, and start again.
The workbook also includes “budget vs. actual” reports where you can input your previous year’s general ledger information and compare it with your budget year over year. These reports help you track how you use your church’s money in comparison with your financial goals.
Other Simple Church Accounting Templates
Housing Allowance Letter
If you are a church employee who needs to claim tax deductions for housing expenses that your employer is not providing, then you need to write a Minister’s Housing Allowance Letter. You can get the letter from the denomination you belong to or use this free sample HAL PDF file to inspire your letter.
941 Report
Churches must file a quarterly 941 Report. This report is a summary of all wages paid to employees in the previous quarter. It is due on the last day of the month following the end of the quarter. If the filing deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, the report is due the next business day.
Churches are exempt from filing with the IRS, but they are not exempt from paying all taxes. In fact, they are required to pay taxes even though they are exempt from filing. You can download this free PDF-format 941 form to format your monthly and quarterly 941 reports.
Employee Tax Forms
Churches don’t have to issue 1099 forms for independent contractors or file annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission. However, the IRS does require churches to issue tax forms to their employees and volunteers. Here’s a sample W2 in PDF format that you can print out.
Small Church Budget Template
Small churches may have different budgetary needs than large churches, so they use different templates. For example, small churches may not have the funds to purchase a lot of printed materials and may have to rely heavily on social media, digital content, and online resources.
Your church should be using budget report templates to represent and share data clearly. It is important that you know how much money you have, how much money you have spent, and how much money is going to be coming in. Check out this free PDF-format budget template to see where you need to save. You can adjust it for monthly or annual budgeting as needed.
Annual Budget Report Template
It’s important that your church has a template for an annual budget report. This will make it easy to produce the report each year. It’s important to be transparent about how your church’s accounts are being spent, and having a template will help you produce a consistent report.
Consider Church Accounting Software to Simplify Your Spreadsheets
It is often said that “you get what you pay for,” and this rings especially true when it comes to church accounting software. Although there are countless options out there that cost absolutely nothing, most of them fail to deliver even the most basic features.
Free Excel and PDF-format spreadsheets are nice, but they’re user-made and don’t offer you any ongoing support. If you need help using free spreadsheets or can’t read a workbook template, you’re out of luck.
Church accounting is a complicated job; it often scares off church workers. But with good church accounting software, all of the administrative tasks become clearer, making it easier to produce complete financial statements for auditors.
Aplos provides churches a cloud-based fund accounting program that allows them to manage giving, membership, and payment processing in one place. The software includes a simple interface available on both Windows and Mac operating systems. Aplos includes a customizable chart of accounts that can be modified to suit the needs of any size church. The platform is flexible enough to process most types of transactions, including cash receipts, online contributions, and vendor payments. It also allows you to create journal entries, generate invoices and statements, and perform bank reconciliations.
