The top four solutions to pastors challenges

Within not-for-profit finance and accounting, church back offices have unique challenges to solve with church accounting software solutions. Thankfully, there are solutions to pastors challenges designed for and affordable for churches, these unique challenges have better results than ever before to help maximize stewardship.

At Baker Tilly, we've done more than 100 software implementations for churches across the country. I'd like to highlight some of the biggest challenges we see among our church customers, along with their solutions.

No. 1 – Credit card management

The problem

Churches use credit cards...a lot. They have a lot of people that need to buy supplies and services for the church - pastors, administrators, ministry leaders, and even volunteers. Churches tend to use corporate cards for purchasing. They don't usually have a centralized buying or purchasing department. They have a lot, often dozens, of department heads and ministry leaders who all buy separately. Managing this fragmented purchasing process is complex and time-consuming.

The solution

One solution, if the church's accounting system has the capability (which many legacy systems don't), is to implement expense or purchase requisitions inside the accounting or ERP system. The end user would choose the appropriate department/ministry and, subject to any approvals the church wants to implement, the purchase would flow through Accounts Payable. While many legacy systems can't handle church purchasing with the necessary number of entry points, modern ERP systems like Sage Intacct can certainly handle this approach.

Another option, and the one we see most, is that the church uses an expense management solution, like Nexonia, that connects to their accounting software via API and pulls data from the credit card company. This allows users to code the expenses appropriately and get them approved. It allows the finance team to implement controls over how much they can spend on certain items, require receipts, and manage travel expenses. Then the data can be pulled directly into cash management in Sage Intacct for reconciliation, and all individual credit card transactions will be combined as one total to be paid via check or record transfer. Solutions like Nexonia also have easy-to-use mobile apps which make submitting expenses and attaching receipts simple.