We generally discuss our budget for the year in the Autumn of the previous year - working out what we feel called to be doing, and assessing our likely income. This gets agreed at the January church meeting.
In each church meeting and each deacons meeting, we review the latest financial report - which compares those budget totals to the spending so far, as part of our commitment to financial transparency and accountability.
However we expect that some things will change during the year (such as utility price changes), and some large-value costs may be incurred without notice (such a maintenance needs on our buildings). Overall we trust that God will provide, and therefore both budgets and reports are a way for us to show good stewardship of the resources we have - but are always flexible estimates to help us discern Gods will.
Structure
Our monthly finance report is split into two main areas, the first is income, and the second is outgoings.
In each of these we have columns for “budget”, the month (or months covered int he report) and “Year end”. The “budget” line is our agreed estimate for the spending in the category over the year, the monthly figures are the actual spending, and the “Year end” gives and updated projection of where we currently expect to be at the end of the year.
Within the outgoing sections, we categorise our spending into three larger areas, “Ministry” covers things we’re doing internally, “Mission” covers things we’re doing externally and “Maintenance” tracks spending needed to keep the church running. Details of the specific entries in each section can be found below.
On the right of the report we have our totals indicating the opening and closing balances of our accounts, some other numbers used in tracking our commitments. These are used to generate the “Available reserves” (the amount of money we have as a church should we require it) and the “projected” figure, which gives and overall figure of how the church’s reserves will change year on year.
Income
- cash - any donations made in cash.
- card/env - any donations made by card or envelopes.
- s/o - any standing orders.
- charity cheques -
- rent - income from renting our our buildings.
- tax - income we get via tax rebates (e.g. GiftAid).
- interest - interest from our bank accounts.
- one off - donations that we do not anticipate to be regular.
- Meals - donations made at meals.
- Clean dons - donations to the cost of cleaning.
- Tots Dons - donations made specifically for Tots.
- Fellowship fund - current balance in the Fellowship fund.
Ministry
- Minister - Costs to pay for our Minister.
- MIT - Costs to pay for our Minister In Training.
- CMD - Continued training funds for our ministers.
- Pastoral/gifts/Cmty Fund - A fund for gifts and pastoral support.
- Gathered Worship - Costs associated with gathered worship (e.g. sunday services).
- Youth and Children - Costs associated with young people’s work.
- Tots - costs associated with tots.
- Social - costs associated with (internal) church socials.
- Meals - costs associated with meals.
- Pulpit supply - costs associated with supplying preachers when our Minister is away.
Mission
- Donations - we aim to give away 10% of our income to other christian work.
- Loc Mission/outreach - This covers costs about local mission and outreach in the town.
- Seed fund for new ventures - We set aside some funds to kick start new ideas and ventures.
Maintenance
- Ch Fabric - This covers repairing the church building.
- Mn Fabric - This covers repairing the manse building.
- Admin/Office/Subs - This covers admin costs and subscriptions.
- Ch Utilities - This covers church building utility bills
- Mn Utilities - This covers manse building utility bills.
- Cleaning - This covers the cleaning services.