The Cash Management report without assets and liabilities selected is the closest report I have seen, but it doesn’t take into account the changes in assets.

The same report with the assets and liabilities selected is closer to a “net worth” report than a “cash flow” report.

Use a search engine to define a “Sources and Uses of Cash” report.

Here are some pointers:
- Start with income over expenses.
- Add back in depreciation
- Subtract mortgage principle paid
- Subtract any money used to buy assets
- Add back in any non-cash expense (depreciation is one example)
- Add back in any non-cash book adjustments

I was involved in the discussion and didn’t have my facts entirely correct. So, this was a learning experience for me.

Here is a link to the discussion on the forum.

When you receive your bank statement, you will be looking at an amount that you’re not used to seeing on your financial reports.

Sometimes that “Wow!” effect that comes from seeing the real amount in one account causes the tendency to overspend money from the general checking account.

Therefore, we have always tried to keep “extra” money in a separate account just so we don’t overspend.

Some churches are affected so much that their giving is seasonal with the changing school calendar (our church is like that).

Some churches have a good number of college students attending as well, during the college months.

Other churches have their own school.

PowerChurch offers many accounting features to keep track of the changing school season. Budgeting can be done planned out on a month-to-month basis, for example.

The PowerChurch Accounts Receivable module comes in handy for billing tuitions for Church Schools (our church takes advantage of that).

Donor specific requests can be easily tracked and accounted for in Fund Accounting.

These are a few good ways PowerChurch helps with the changing school seasons.

Churches are not subject to the same reporting as some non-profits organizations, and there is a threshold of income on a for-profit section of a church’s business.

Be aware of the tax filing rules. Here is one link. Searching for others on the Internet is an easy task.

We vastly underestimated the amount and the cost of ink cartridges of about 8-years-ago vintage printers.

Wow! We spent about $1200 producing about 300 directories. The administrative assistants were overworked and frustrated by the lack of cooperation of the printer, and all the mis-feeds and replacement ink cartridges made it unbearable.

We are back to sending our directories out to the printers. It may not be the cheapest way on paper, but it is the better way overall, we think.

High on the list of payroll changes is the ability to access all of the menus from the list of employees. Each tab represents what used to be a separate menu item that had to be accessed from a sequence of menu choices.

A lot of maintenance can be done from the tabs in the employee menus. Personal information can be added or edited. Positions and Departments can be added or edited.

Some things still not accessible are adding Pay Items and Departments. These must be added the long-hand way requiring a minimum of four mouse-clicks to get to the correct window. Ummm.. still needs a little tweaking.

Since our budgets are divided up month-by-month, we like to see a year-to-date expense compared to a 12-month budget. Therefore, we use the Income and Expense Report from January to December, no matter what month it is (to get the 12-month budget to show up).

In column 2, we choose “Current Budget”.

In column 3, we choose “Current Budget Difference”

In column 3, we choose “Current Budget Percentage”

For one thing, this report doesn’t include account numbers, unless you want it to. There is no option to turn off account numbers in the “Budget Report”.

It just looks “cleaner” as well. Hard to explain other than “try it!”

“Some companies offer computer programs on the Internet and provide a free downloadable trial version. Some sites have tutorials that assist with learning how to operate the software. Tutorials for church accounting software usually include basic information about the program; how to begin using the program; menu bar options and help menus throughout each option. Some companies offer training classes for their software. All churches need a good system for record keeping. Church accounting software will assist in keeping good records. Information will be at one’s fingertips when purchasing programs for the church accountant.”

My goal is to go a little beyond the basics, and offer tutorials for PowerChurch that instruct in use that comes from years of experience of using this software, and growing with it. PowerChurch accounting software has saved us in personnel costs. We are able to maintain a rather complex, medium-sized, multi-site church, with a part-time bookkeeper thanks to PowerChurch.

Hopefully, your church will be able to achieve the same results.

Sites like this become easy targets for spammers, and it takes away from the purpose of the site to have to sift through a large percentage of spams to get to the real comments.

I am available at the PowerChurch Plus forum: http://powerchurch.com/forum along with many other knowledgeable power church helpers.

Please join us there.

Also, please visit my frequently asked questions site for power church.