budgeting

Guest Post – Cash Conversion Cycle of Donors

Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Would it be helpful to more thoroughly understand incoming church attendees, their giving, and if they feel accepted, welcomed, and a part of the local church family? This post will explore analyzing how long it takes for someone to give as a means to understand the newcomers.

About tracking trends, there are some considerations we need to ponder. When someone first shows up at church, they rarely give the first day. If they do give, they rarely would give their “normal” amount unless they felt part of the church, as if they had some sort of relationship or ownership.

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Live spreadsheet to illustrate the forecasting model – part 5

Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either. especially when he posts spreadsheets.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog. This is the final post in a five-part series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

For those that would find it helpful to have a spreadsheet demonstration of how to venture your luck at forecasting a church’s revenue, I am uploading the model I use. It has dummy numbers and information, of course.

My goal in it is to help others by providing a resource that they can

  • A) use for their church,
  • B) modify for their church, or
  • C) get an understanding of what the previous blog posts were explaining.

If you find it helpful—great!

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 4

Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog. This is the fourth post in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Part 4– Final thoughts

Introduction is here. Description of forecasting model is here. Calculations discussed here.

Okay, once the research is complete, we can put together a fair and reasonably accurate estimation of tithes and offerings for budgeting for next year.

Next, the smell test. I have learned the necessity of this. So if the model says next year will increase by 5-10%, I should look at what has happened in the past (at least with the past I won’t have to make any guesses since it already happened!).

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 3

Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog. This is the third in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Part 3 – Calculations

Introduction is here. Description of forecasting model is here.

You still with me?

Good.

Trying to figure out how to forecast revenue for nonprofits is quite a sticky issue. After all, it is much simpler to try to forecast revenue for a company that sells some product, say, bread, soda, or gasoline. There is a reasonable understanding that people need (or want) those items.

For a financial model, there is the term “financial driver” which means anything that affects the rise and fall of revenues, expenses, etc. The four categories for revenue drivers are: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 2

Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog. This is the second in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Part 2 – Philosophy and foundation discussion

Introduction and encouragement to pastors is here.

We were forecasting revenue for the next year and knew we needed to be accurate. We needed to do our best to discern changes (be that attendance, economic changes, etc.) in the church that will affect revenue.

After the first year or two of using a flat percentage increase by looking at the past few years and trying to make a determination for the entire year’s revenue in under an hour (yes, that happens frequently in churches!), we realized our mistake to make it such a hasty and cursory decision-making process.

We then then took a different road. One that required more work but—hopefully—would be worth it in the end.

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Jim Ulvog

Guest Post – Forecasting Annual Church Revenues: Using Trends and Cycles to Help Predict Future Revenues – part 1

Mr. Jeff Beaumont is a CPA working for a firm that focuses on serving the nonprofit community. His opinions are his own and do not reflect the opinions or positions of his firm in any way. Because he speaks for himself, I won’t identify him or his firm in any more detail. He doesn’t speak for me either.

He has about seven years experience as an auditor working on the issues discussed on this blog. This is the first in a series.

By Jeff Beaumont, CPA

Introduction and encouragement to pastors

I found myself with a group of others only a couple of months before that church’s year-end was over to discuss the seemingly never-ending debate on how to set a budget. The good part, everyone agreed that expenses should be less than or match revenues. But then we needed to figure out revenue.

How do you determine that? I found myself holding in tension believing in faith that He will deliver what we need and, sometimes seen as “at odds”, being responsible and wise to take care of what we have been given. I was working in spreadsheets. I didn’t—still don’t!—know how to factor those concepts into budgeting. After all, God doesn’t fit in a spreadsheet.

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Jim Ulvog

Some traps church business administrators need to avoid

The urgency of things that must be addressed now can take focus away from bigger issues that have long-term payoff.  Verne Hargrave, CPA, of PSK has started a good series on traps that business administrators can fall into because of tyranny of the urgent.

Looks to be a very helpful series. Would be worth your time to visit his blog regularly. Maybe even set it up on your RSS feed.  I’ll highlight it occasionally.

Ten Things to Avoid  in Church Administration starts the discussion. Mr. Hargrave points out a few problems that can arise if tyranny-of-the-urgent takes over your life: (more…)

Jim Ulvog