How I Found $25K (and how you can, too)

It was budget season, and I was looking again to cut expenses and "find some money" to fund the important things. They never told me in seminary that pastoring would involve such an annual (sometimes quarterly) fiduciary task.

As I reviewed the church's expenses, I kept returning to the big ones: mortgage, payroll, and building maintenance. As much as I wanted to cut the mortgage, I couldn't. We had recently refinanced and received a great rate—I didn't want to touch that! Sadly, our facility's utility bills and upkeep weren't getting cheaper. So, I begrudgingly opened the books to examine our personnel and ask hard questions.

If you're a business owner, you already know that the first thing you look at in personnel is services: things you contract or have done simply because you need the service. Custodial services, administrative support, maintenance/repair, service contracts... So, I began looking, wondering if I could cut a service here or there or find a less expensive option.

There wasn't a good option, but I was willing to be creative. We did have one open position: bookkeeper. Staffing it differently could ease the headache. I began brainstorming and called a few trusted people for advice.

One friend suggested: "Why don't you outsource it? Hire someone locally to do it and take it out of your office. Create another contract. It'll be cheaper than having a full-time support person in-house!" I immediately thought, brilliant! I began interviewing CPAs and bookkeeper groups in town (including a few church members) the next day.

The bottom line was that they weren't much cheaper, and we would lose some accessibility to our archive because each firm had its own system. Like any good researcher, I just kept following the scent. I knew we could do something more efficiently and have the access we needed moving forward, much less save money.

It was only a short time before my search produced another option: virtual bookkeeping. At first glance, it seemed weird. I had some red flags (that I won't bore you with here because I want to get to the more exciting part). After consulting with a trusted CPA friend, he encouraged me to check it out. He even remarked how it would reduce financial and institutional risk to have a third party manage our books in this way because we wouldn't have immediate access to commit fraud from the inside.

Long story short, I interviewed and found a firm that I agreed to try. I have been with a virtual bookkeeper for about ten years. It took due diligence, but we reduced our annual bookkeeping expenses by $25K. At the time, we had an overall income of $800K (not bad for a church or small business), and those savings enabled us to fund our next-generation ministries (outreach services for kids) in a new way.

Not only did the $25K help but there were also new benefits to virtual bookkeeping. Our processes were streamlined, cutting down on my time each week, from approvals to questions to submitting bills. I signed NO MORE CHECKS. They were all handled with dual approval outside of our office. If a vendor contacted our office about something, we gladly referred them. The security and accessibility of our information were enhanced: once permissions were correctly set up, our treasurer and I had easy access to any report or journal entry we needed. It made board meetings much more effortless.

I share this story with you to suggest that you may have $25K (or $10K or $100K) that you can use differently. Making this move didn't make us rich or anything like that; it helped us be better stewards of what God had blessed us with. And, speaking for many pastors, the church (as an industry) needs to be known more for being more trustworthy.

And if you'd like to talk about it, I'd be happy to schedule a chat and help you think through it. After all, it's stewardship, right?