Solving the Plight of Church Bookkeepers with Financial Edge NXT
Gail Burdette works tirelessly as the bookkeeper at her church. She has faithfully served on the church staff for 27 years. The nameplate on her desk may say “Bookkeeper”, but in reality, Gail is so much more than that. She serves in so many capacities that she has become the glue that holds the church together and allows the rest of the staff to do ministry without missing a beat. Gail makes sure that not only is every penny allocated to the correct department, category and fund, but that every “i” dotted and every “t” is crossed. In addition to handling accounts payable, accounts receivable and payroll, she helps remind Pastor Frank of all of the church members’ birthdays, schedules all of the committee meetings and keeps the whole office running.
Underneath all of the general office duties are Gail’s responsibilities in managing the financial bookkeeping. In recent years, as more tithing has moved to online, it has created different routines and more separate items on her weekly to-do list. With the church growing, the leadership has begun to ask Gail for more detailed reports. It had gotten to the point that not only did her computer monitor have sticky notes encircling the edge of it, the sticky notes began to stack two, three and even four thick. These Post-It notes began to serve as Gail’s memory in paper form in order to keep track of passwords, account GLs, report types and who to send what reports to.
It eventually got to the point that by the time the middle of the week rolled around, Gail’s eyes would start to blur so much that she would have to push back from her desk, take off her plastic rimmed glasses and rub her eyes to clear her vision. After a brief pause, she could resume looking for the specific note that she needed with the category, the department number and fund name written on it.
All of this started to be too much for sweet Gail. She began to think that she would never be able to keep up with all of the new funds coming in and the reports that the deacons requested. The toilsome nature of the bookkeeping was slowly snuffing out the passion that she had when she entered into ministry 27 years ago. Luckily, her son told her about how his church had moved from a legacy financial software system to a cloud-deployed software-as-a-service (SaaS) called Financial Edge NXT.
When Gail first heard about it, she thought that this new-fangled software was just one more thing that she would have to learn and manage. However, the intuitive nature of Financial Edge NXT made it easy to learn right away. Blackbaud provided her with great training that showed her the full capabilities of what was possible in today’s world of accounting. The on-demand tech support that was included helped her learn new things and knock out the bookkeeping side of her job faster than she had ever been able to. Financial Edge NXT has made Gail so efficient at knocking out the bookkeeping tasks that she now has time for the other parts of ministry that fill her cup.
Everyone always knew that Gail was the unsung hero behind the scenes, but now she is able to do additional ministry that is not behind a desk. Financial Edge NXT has helped fan Gail’s flame of passion for ministry and allowed her to once again live out the “why” that lead her into ministry- to help and love people.
To find out more about how Financial Edge NXT can help your staff become more efficient and do more hands-on ministry, request a free demo here.
