Finance blueprint
Church bookkeeping with two assistants
One assistant handles card expenses, another keeps the books and processes weekly deposits, and staff approve every entry.
The problem
Card receipts, bank transactions, reconciliations, and the weekly check deposit all land on the same small church office.
What it does
Two assistants split the work. An expense assistant connected to Ramp handles card expenses: receipts, coding, and memos. A bookkeeping assistant connected to QuickBooks Online posts missing bank transactions once staff approve each one, helps with month-end bank reconciliations, codes card expenses, and processes the weekly deposit.
How the split works
- Expense assistant (Ramp): collects receipts, codes card expenses, and writes memos.
- Bookkeeping assistant (QuickBooks Online): posts missing bank transactions after staff approve each one, helps with month-end bank reconciliations, and codes card expenses.
Weekly deposit processing
- Staff scan the week's checks and send them to the assistant's inbox.
- It totals the checks by fund using each check's memo. A blank memo goes to the General Fund.
- It counts the checks.
- It builds a CSV file for importing donations into the church management system.
- It makes a deposit worksheet with checks, cash, and fund totals.
A person reviews the worksheet and enters the donations from the import file.
Setup
- Connect your accounting software (we use QuickBooks Online).
- Connect your expense platform (we use Ramp).
- Connect your church management system, read-only for giving.
- Connect cloud storage for the files it saves.
- Pick your report formats and due dates.
- Set the rule: staff approve before anything is posted or sent.
Guardrails
- It never posts to the books without staff approval.
- Giving records are read-only. A person enters donations from the import file.
- Bank account and routing numbers never go in reports.
- No purchases, deleting records, or signing in to accounts without staff present.
- It never sends email on its own.
Time saved
We're still tracking this honestly, so there's no number here yet.
Questions pastors ask
- Does it post to the books by itself?
- No. Staff approve each transaction before it is posted.
- Can it enter donations?
- No. Giving records are read-only. It builds an import file, and a person enters the donations.
- What happens when a check has no memo?
- It goes to the General Fund.
- Why two assistants instead of one?
- Each one stays focused on one system: one on card expenses in Ramp, one on the books in QuickBooks Online.