Do you want to increase the productivity and organization of your church? Or simplify the operational aspects to free up more time for ministry? A complete church management system is designed to assist churches with structuring and managing all aspects of daily operations. Everything works together—member and donation management, church accounting, websites, and communication.
This means fewer logins and passwords to remember, and more importantly, all the tools work together. A simple way to put it is that these programs “talk” to each other. Information is synced automatically, so inputting information doesn’t have to be done more than once.
This blog is going to look at one aspect of complete church management—accounting. A good church management system is designed with accounting, pledges, and giving statements in mind.
Financial Management
Stewardship is an important component of church growth and impact. Generosity funds the ministry happening within churches, communities, and the world.
You want an accounting program that is built for churches. Financial software within a complete church management system can help manage and maximize ministry growth through appropriately stewarding resources. It provides the ability to manage and update ledgers, payroll, receivables, and payables. And because it works with your other church software, donation amounts are synced with member profiles. This also makes reporting a breeze, too.
Pledges
Pledge campaigns can help churches accurately plan for the ministry they want to accomplish. Though pledges are simply an estimate of how much money people plan to give, it can help with church budgeting.
There are multiple ways people can pledge, such as by filling out a physical form or calling the office. But an all-in-one church management system makes it even easier with integrated online giving and accounting.
Create a digital pledge form on your online giving page. People can access it via the web, or you could include the link when they text your church’s designated number. They’ll be able to indicate the amount of their pledge as well as the frequency, like weekly, monthly, or yearly. Pledges can coincide with recurring giving, too, which is then aligned with their online giving account.
Resource: See a donation’s journey from online gift, to ChMS, to financials.
Giving Statements
Accounting and complete church management help to align ministry goals with data and financial insight by effortlessly generating valuable reports. This can also take the stress out of providing financial statements to donors, pastors, etc.
The information in these reports can be included in the giving statements that go out to your donors. A contribution statement is a document an organization provides after receiving a donation. It lists the details of the donation and can include pledge campaign updates and progress. This giving statement is then presented to the donor for their financial records.
Some churches type up a Word doc or download spreadsheets online. However, if you want to make church accounting and statements easy, having a dedicated program geared toward church finances will save a great amount of time and effort. It’s especially helpful when it’s a part of your complete ChMS. That’s because you won’t have to open one program to hunt down addresses, another to generate the report, and another to email it out.
A Solution that Supports Growth
Shelby System’s complete church management and financials products work together seamlessly to provide churches with the accessibility and security they need. If you want to see how integrated ChMS and church accounting can help your ministry reach its goals, contact us today!