How Churches Use Technology to Improve Stewardship of Church Finances

Faith Promise Church

Faith Promise Church is a rapidly growing church with six campuses, two prison ministries, and an online campus. Before the church adopted Sage Intacct, they struggled with manual and duplicate data entry in their church finances. The finance team spent one or two days each month on manual reconciliation. Sage Intacct streamlined financial workflows and boosted efficiency and productivity — in fact, the time the CFO and his finance assistant spend entering data dropped from 40% to just 5%, allowing for increased time and focus on stewardship. The finance team also gained the ability to make decisions faster, so they could stay agile. Now, Faith Promise Church can monitor cyclical giving trends and manage cash according to how donations and expenses are flowing in real-time. They use Sage Intacct’s flexible reporting to pull the data they need to answer any question. Customized campus dashboards have improved departmental and location visibility.

“We pride ourselves on being nimble, being fast, and I think part of the reason we’ve seen so much growth is that Sage Intacct ensures we have accurate information that we can get to the right people quickly. Churches tend to be slow in processing decisions, but we can be very fast in our decision-making, which gives us a great advantage in trying to move into communities that may not have a church like ours.”

Aaron Goin, Chief Financial Officer, Faith Promise Church

Grace Fellowship Church

Good decision making is a hallmark of good stewardship. Without current, accurate financial information, decision makers lack the data they need to make the best decisions. Grace Fellowship Church used to supply the management team with information two weeks after the close — meaning the data points contained in reports were anywhere from two to six weeks old. Today, Grace Fellowship Church’s leadership team relies on Sage Intacct’s real-time dashboards for current, accurate insights for strategic decision-making. Grace Fellowship Church has also been able to save considerable time and money by integrating several of its financial applications. Now, the fund accounting and financial management of Sage Intacct is integrated with the accounts payable automation of Bill.com and the expense report automation of Tallie.

“By improving our accounts payables process and combining best-in-class software from Sage Intacct, Bill.com and Tallie, we are saving two weeks each month that we previously spent just entering invoices and expenses. This avoids around $22,000 every year in additional staffing costs.”

Stacie Porter, Director of Finance, Grace Fellowship Church

 Potential Church

Like many faith-based organizations, the leadership team at Potential Church experienced delayed access to financial data and results. It took too long to close at the end of each month. With Sage Intacct, Potential Church gained confidence in the accuracy of their financial statements. They were also able to reduce the time it took the finance team required for monthly close by 50%. Without real-time visibility, they struggled to get the reports and data needed to support decision making. With their old on-premises church accounting software, to find out how much was collected in Sunday donations, the management team had to wait until the following Thursday. With Sage Intacct, they can view 95% of weekly revenue at each campus by Sunday night. With better visibility and streamlined financial processes, Potential Church is positioned for additional growth and has strengthened stewardship by being able to run a lean finance team.

“The biggest improvement we saw with Sage Intacct was the speed and accuracy of our monthly financial close, which now takes half the time it did with QuickBooks and is completely trustworthy. Rather than constantly struggling to keep up with incoming requests for data and specific reports, we now consistently report financials in a timely manner and feel confident that we can respond to any new request easily.”

Reggie Alexis, Controller, Potential Church