Finance Committee’s New Year To Do List – Part I
Finance Chairs are probably building their committee’s “To Do” list for 2019. Here is Part I of a lengthy list. Next month – getting down to business.
- Divide responsibilities! You simply can’t to all this yourself and you’ll burn yourself out if you try. Ask people to take responsibility for many of the items listed below. Your job is to manage them so that everything gets done.
- Meet / get to know your Bookkeeper and Financial Secretary. Discuss when monthly reports (Income Statement and Balance Sheet) will be available. Ask your Bookkeeper to provide a list of comments together with each financial report. These should explain unusual / significant revenues, expenditures or variances from budget during the current month or year-to-date. Review the routines of both the Bookkeeper and Financial Secretary to insure you are comfortable with them. Be sure you understand how/when checks are written and who has check-signing authority.
- Get to know your fellow Committee members. Have a list of them, together with their “class” year.
- Establish meeting dates – for the entire year – that are acceptable to the Committee and insure you will have financial reports and comments at least a few days before the meeting. You, the Chair, should review the reports with the Bookkeeper several days prior to the meeting so that additional information can be compiled if necessary.
- Appoint a Secretary to take minutes of each meeting. Ask him/her to type up the minutes and give them to you for review within 48 hours of the meeting. This is very important since time erases our memory of what actually took place.
- Distribute budgets to each Department Chair and review it with him/her or the Department as a whole.
- Review the procedures for getting bills paid with each Department or Department Chair.
- Arrange to have two (2) money counters each Sunday in 2019 and for special services where a collection will be taken. Distribute the 2019 schedule to each counter and be sure reminders will go out at least monthly.
- Review the cash collection procedures following Sunday services. Understand where and when the cash moves from the offering table in the sanctuary until it is deposited in the bank. (Best practices say that the money should be in the bank by Sunday afternoon.)
- Update your Authorized Signers – if you’ve had changes in committee members, you may want/need to update your AS lists at the bank, the Foundation, DevCo, insurance company, etc.
- If you don’t have one, order a copy of Finance – Handling God’s Money in the Church from Cokesbury for less than $5. This easy-to-read, 42 page book provides excellent information and procedures for everything from cash management to budgeting to taxes. It also contains suggested job descriptions for the Treasurer, Financial Secretary and Chair of Finance.
