Creating Excellent Reports for the Church Board
Anyone who has served on the board in more than one church knows that church boards are all very different. Sometimes a board has no idea what the reports mean, so they look at them for a few minutes and then vote them through without question or discussion, while other church boards question every little thing and require details and explanations.
Whatever kind of church board you have, there are really three main questions they are asking:
- How much money do we have coming in?
- How/where is it being spent?
- How much of what we have is Trust Funds and how much do we have left to spend on whatever we need?
Jewel monthly reports can answer all those questions, depending on how the church's financial information is entered and organized. But, if the information being posted every week into Jewel is inaccurate, incomplete or confusing, the reports may not answer those questions.
One of your most important tasks as a treasurer is to provide accurate and clear monthly reports to your board, so they can make good financial decisions. Most likely, you inherited an account list and a way of doing things, so at first, observe. Look at the reports. Do they make sense? Do they easily answer the three important questions? Could one of your youth or a person off the street understand them? Does your board understand them?
There are things that you, as treasurer, can do to improve the clarity, accuracy, and simplicity of your reports. Here are a few of them.
- Have a well-ordered chart of accounts so that the financial summary is easy to read. Does your Jewel monthly financial summary have some sort of order, or does it look like it was set up using a dartboard? Remember, you are just observing, not making changes. Any major changes to the order of the Local Funds should have board approval and the assistance of an auditor.
- Create memos for each transaction that are clear and complete and that answer every question. Writing good memos is an art, and you can learn it. To take your memos to an extraordinary level, read Memo Writing Tips.
- Consistently and correctly date transactions so that all reports are chronological and clean.
- Follow the monthly sequence in posting, reconciling and closing.
Mastery in these areas will go a long way in achieving clear, accurate, and simple reports. This will result in confidence on the part of the board. They will know where the church stands financially and be able to make decisions with a minimum of fuss and bother.