Random Stuff

I love music. Corey and I have similar taste in music. He reviewed the new Third Day called Revelation here. If Corey likes it, I'll probably like it. So, I'll check it out.

My friend Todd had some interesting comments about Freezing your Credit Report and your "Health Credit Report".

Wanna Save an easy $1,400 a year?

Replace bottled water with Tap water. Article here. Interesting points from the article:

• Typical American Consumer pays $1,400 per year for bottled water vs. 49 cents per year for the same amount of tap water
• Blind taste tests show no difference in taste between the two.
• Tap water has stricter safety measures
• 40% of bottled water sold in stores is tap water
• Average price for 20 oz. bottle of water = $1.50. That puts bottled water at about $10.00 a gallon. And I thought gasoline was expensive! (at $10/gal. for bottled tap water shouldn't there be outrage at "Big Water"?)

I like to drink a lot of water. I admit that I do buy bottled water. But, the way I try to save money on bottled water is by using the bottle over and over again to fill it with tap water.

Finance Casual Q & A Session at Innovate

I'll be hosting a Casual Q&A Session at Innovate on Thursday, September 18. This session is a casual atmosphere where we have the opportunity to ask questions and have dialogue about church finance and accounting.

In order to keep the atmosphere casual, the session is limited to 10 and registration is required. You can register for Innovate here. If you're registered for Innovate, you can register for the Finance Casual Q&A here.

Lone accountant takes on IRS and wins

I saw this headline and had to read the article. A modern day David and Goliath. Chalk one up for the accountant. Way to go Charles!

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?

What's the Most Asked Question?

I get lots of questions from other churches about how we do things here at GCC. However, the most asked question is, "How do you do Online Giving?"

My first answer is always, "I love online giving!" But, the main reason that I love online giving is because of the tool we use to facilitate it. Our online giving is powered by Fellowship One or F1 which is our church management software.

Here are a few of the cool features of F1 Online Giving:

• It's secure


• It's donor directed


• It's easy to connect to your web site


• It allows weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. contribution schedules


• It posts online donations to the donor's record automatically


• It reduces check processing


• It allows the use of any or all of credit card, debit card, eCheck(ACH) payment options

It's a great tool for online giving. If you're interested, give the folks at Fellowship Technologies a call.