To successfully prevent becoming the victim of fraud, a church must assess its current condition, develop a fraud protection plan and implement the plan. But, it can’t stop there. Key: The church must live by the plan from that point forward. It must make a commitment to the future. The plan must be on-going. A […]
“”The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age.”–Lucille Ball One way to answer the question “Who gives the money?” is to analyze giving according to age groups. Two methods of analysis can be used: Computing the total dollars given by each age-group and/or computing a per […]
Last week, as I was trying to dig through the computer for my username and password for eBay I realized that I spend more time and energy trying to protect myself today than ever before… locks, alarms, usernames, passwords, pin numbers, codes, security questions, security answers…the list goes on and on. It may come as a […]
I don’t mean this literally of course. Few churches have the resources to have full time security guards. But, churches need to do more than they currently do. Because churches “obsess” over watching over their bank accounts, they have very little time left to watch over their “stuff”. That’s why I can safely say that […]
Getting Value out of Your Church’s Financial Data One of my wife’s favorite television shows is “The Antique Road Show”. Each week, people bring all kinds of antiques and assorted junk to an exhibit hall where experts tell them what they have and more importantly what it is worth. I have to admit that […]
The Tax Relief, Unemployement Insurance Reauthorization & Job Creation Act that was signed into Law in December 2010 has made changes to the way you calculate your social security deductions on your employee paychecks for 2011. Social Security tax rates will be reduced by two percentage points. The employee-portion of Social Security taxes will be […]
Millions of small employers received postcards from the IRS last Spring that alerted them to the new small business health care tax credit and encouraged them to check their eligibility. Perhaps your church did not receive this notice because it does not file a tax return. Even if you didn’t receive a postcard, your church […]
Except in the rarest of cases, personnel costs are the single largest expenditure of a church. Because churches are in the “service industry”, it should come as no surprise that forty-five to fifty percent of the typical church budget will be dedicated to employee related costs. This highlights a basic principle in the behavior of […]