Finance blueprint
Monthly finance reports, built for you
Year-to-date versus budget, the treasurer's report, and a deferred revenue tracker, plus small routines that run on their own.
The problem
Month-end reports, birthday lists, and payroll reminders eat hours, and they're easy to forget until they're late.
What it does
It builds the monthly year-to-date versus budget report for leadership, the monthly treasurer's report, and a deferred revenue tracker. A few routines also run on a schedule, and a person reviews every report before it goes to leadership.
Reports it builds
- Monthly year-to-date versus budget report for leadership.
- Monthly treasurer's report.
- A deferred revenue tracker.
What runs automatically
- Every weekday morning: it refreshes the deferred revenue tracker.
- On the 15th of each month: it builds the birthday and anniversary lists from the church management system. It skips unlisted addresses, puts married couples on one line, saves the lists to cloud storage, and flags deceased members or status changes.
- Every morning: it checks the payroll calendar. Two days before each payroll date, it drafts the timesheet request emails. They stay drafts until staff press Send.
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.
- A person reviews each report before it goes to leadership.
Time saved
We're still tracking this honestly, so there's no number here yet.
Questions pastors ask
- Does leadership get reports straight from the assistant?
- No. A person reviews each report first.
- Does it send the timesheet reminders?
- No. It drafts them, and staff press Send.
- How does it handle the birthday list?
- It skips unlisted addresses, puts married couples on one line, and flags deceased members or status changes for a person to check.