Fund Accounting That Scales With Large Churches

What should the monthly board packet hold?

Four things: fund balances (what's left in missions, building, benevolence and operations), what came in and went out of each fund, budget versus actual for the funds the board approved, and a way to trace any total back to the entries behind it.

Grain produces all four from the same books: fund balance reports that show how much each fund went up or down, the Statement of Activities, budget versus actual, and a click from any number to its journal entries. The Balance Sheet and Statement of Cash Flows come with them. The packet is the ledger, not a workbook someone rebuilt the night before the meeting.

How do designated gifts stay designated?

By keeping each one in its own fund from the day it arrives. Church Law & Tax notes that a church generally has to use a designated gift for the purpose the donor named, or get the donor's consent to change it, and that diverting one can lead to refund claims and lawsuits.

In Grain, every plan has unlimited funds, and donor-restricted gifts, designated gifts and board-designated reserves are tracked separately. When a bill or expense would take a restricted fund below zero, Grain warns you. Nobody overspends the building fund without seeing it.

Can each department have its own budget?

Yes, and you don't need the top plan for it. You can build budgets by fund, by department or by any dimension you tag, and budget versus actual updates in real time. Growth includes unlimited active budgets. Scale adds multi-scenario planning, so you can compare a proposed, an approved and a revised budget.

Campuses work the same way: tag transactions by campus instead of keeping a separate ledger for each one.

Who approves spending, and who checks the bank?

Two different people. An article on Church Law & Tax from Brotherhood Mutual recommends preparing disbursements only when someone has approved and documented the payment, and having someone other than the person who prepares them reconcile the check registers to the bank statements.

In Grain, bills route for approval before they're paid, and each bill keeps its trail from invoice to payment. Roles decide who can do what: standard roles on Starter and Growth, custom roles on Scale. Growth and Scale have unlimited users, so whoever reconciles the bank gets their own login instead of borrowing the bookkeeper's.

What does it cost at this size?

The price follows your church's annual revenue or expenses, whichever is higher, not its member count. Grain takes the middle value of your last three completed months and multiplies it by 12.

In the 2020 Faith Communities Today study, congregations with an average weekly attendance of more than 250 had a median income of $1.7 million. A church with that income would pay $150 a month on Scale. On Aplos's pricing page, the plan listed as best for organizations with $1 million or more in annual revenue has no price, only a personalized quote on request.

Payroll is an add-on on any plan: $50 a month plus $10 per employee.

Does Grain work with the church management software we already use?

Yes. Grain is the finance ledger, and your church management system and giving platform stay where they are. Grain imports gifts from Planning Center, Pushpay, Rock RMS, Subsplash, Overflow and OnlineGiving, card spend from Ramp and Bill.com Spend & Expense, and bank transactions through Plaid.