Meetings don’t have to suck because of boring number reports. Make them shine! Giving just the right amount of financial information out and how they look, takes a lot of work but well worth your effort in the long run. Financial reports are not just numbers! If prepared right and well thought out, your reports can tell a story about your church. I have taught many Financial training courses such as Financial Peace University and Crown Financial and part of their training is where your money gets spent and how to better track it. Show me a persons checkbook and I’ll show you where their heart is…has been said over and over in financial classes. It’s true even in church reporting. Show me a church budget and I’ll show you where their heart is, or not where it is.
There are three popular types of church reports and all three have specific uses. Learn the purpose of these three types and you will be on your way to better reporting to your church congregation.
#1 Standard reports are whatever your computer prints out such as Balance Sheets, Income/Expense, and Detail Ledger reports. Depending on how detailed your account structure is, Standard reports may or may not be right for you. If you use a highly detailed account structure you will most likely not want to present so much detail and instead use a custom summary report. If you have a limited account structure you may be OK to just print reports and present what you have.
#2 Custom Reports allow you to take a lot of information and summarize it. An example would be taking your detailed budget report and condensing it down to just showing the major categories of your budget. You present the same overall picture just without all the detail. Keep in mind once you go beyond standard reports, make sure you are transparent and offer up the detail to church members that may want all the detail. Some software programs such as Shelby and ACS help you create special (custom) reports very easily.
#3 Dashboard reports are custom reports that really tell a great story if done right. Dashboard report have a lot of pertinent information not only financially but what is going on in the church. Examples that you would see on this report would be Bible Study attendance, Building Fund receipts, special offerings like monthly mission giving emphasis, and summer camp decisions. Whatever you add, it shows what contributions were used for. Dashboard reports tell a story of what your church is doing.
So, there you have three popular types I would highly recommend you implement. I use all three types for different purposes. For Finance Committee meetings I use the dashboard report as a summary page supplemented with standard reports as my back up to the dashboard.For Business meetings I use a custom report that is condensed. Most church members only want to see totals and how we are doing as the bottom line.
CAUTION: Dashboard and custom reports typically are Excel reports you created. When using those always have standard reports as your backup to substantiate your numbers.
Here is the Dashboard Financial Report Summary I use. I have used this same report for about 8 years at two different churches and it presents great. It tells the story of your church. The reader can quickly see what happened that particular month and where you are year to date.
Click on the picture to see my sample Dashboard report!
What types do you use? Do you use all three? Leave a comment or start a discussion?
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook