Even if one of your members is a professional accountant or bookkeeper for nonprofits, it will still be an investment to hire a specialist to handle your church's books. This is why we encourage you to make it a priority. Your church can reap the benefits of this investment in three ways.
FT Walton Church Bookkeeping LLC is able to help you prevent fraud and reduce other financial risks that could potentially affect your church or nonprofit. There are many stories about charities and other 501c3 organizations misusing funds. To help protect your organization, we will keep an eye on your books.
While mistakes in church bookkeeping are not uncommon, there are steps that you can take to avoid them.
The tip to avoid this church bookkeeping error is to thoroughly look at each individual you are paying for a service they do for the church and using the IRS guidelines (link in the Misclassification article) to determine if they should be classified as an employee with all proper payroll tax withholding and matching or could be classified as an independent contractor.
Why not outsource? Outsourcing a bookkeeper for small to medium-sized churches can improve expertise and accuracy, reduce bookkeeping costs, and add a missing link in internal control. Let's look at each one.
You can decide whether you want to pay an independent contractor or an employee if you are unsure.
Would you like the youth director able to add expenses directly to your accounting program but not want her to have access payroll information? FT Walton Church Bookkeeping LLC provides all the services you need.
Churches and religious nonprofits must maintain highly accurate accounting and bookkeeping records in order to maintain their nonprofit status, budget accurately, and provide reporting to government entities and their parishoners or members.
seven years
Financial Records are traditionally kept for seven years. This relates to the laws of tax audits and the number of years back the IRS is allowed to look when determining an organization's tax liability.
Working in church accounting, you share the same responsibilities as an accountant in any other organization. You record expenses, track contributions made by the congregation, and monitor spending on various programs. Your duties center around bookkeeping, documenting and controlling finances for a church.
81% of church revenue came from individual donations. 34% of congregations have endowments, which constituted on average 4% of their revenue. Only 2% of churches received revenue from government grants; 12% received finance from non-government grants.