What are Your Offering Procedures?

Someone from another church was asking about our weekend offering policies and procedures. Although I didn't give them specific procedures, here are the guidelines that I gave them.

1. No less than 2 unrelated people (i.e. not husband and wife) are with the offering at any given time. We typically have ushers, security, and count team members around when the offering isn’t in the safe (maybe 3-5 people). Separate those who collect the offering and those who count and process it.

2. Secure the offering in a safe place when it isn’t being taken or counted. We use a safe that is bolted to the floor with a drop box on it and locked bank deposit bags.

3. Limit those with the safe combination to as few as possible. If possible, staff with access to the accounting system should not have access to the safe. This goes with #4. Keeps staff with access to the accounting system separated from access to cash, checks, etc. Currently, none of the accounting staff at GCC has access to the safe.

4. Separate the duties between those who process the cash, checks, etc. and those who have control over the Accounting System. This is where the volunteer count team helps us tremendously. None of us on staff, who have access to accounting records, have access to the cash because the count team processes the cash and check offering.

5. Create a process for counting and processing the offering so that everything gets counted accurately, separated into appropriate buckets (i.e. General Fund, Building Fund), and posted into accounting systems accordingly.

6. Check and double check. Then, reconcile. This is why we have one person on the count team count and a separate person check the count (both sign the count sheet). This is why we run a batch tape, enter the batch total, and then make sure that the individual items agree to the batch total. This is why our Accounting Team spends most of Monday reconciling all the count team sheets to F1 and then posting the totals to the General Ledger. This is why we reconcile Fellowship One to the General Ledger every month. Everything needs to balance.

7. Reconcile the bank statement to the General Ledger every month. This is a good control for several processes. For contributions it ensures that what was deposited was posted and what was posted was deposited.

8. If someone takes the offering to the bank, make sure there are 2 people who do it together. Otherwise, use an armored car pick up service. I recommend the armored car especially as offerings get larger.

These were the guidelines I thought of. Any that I missed or should be added?