Managing your church's finances

For the pastor and the board: what changes

A church's money is entrusted by its members. Keeping it in a notebook or an Excel file works as long as one person handles it and nobody asks questions. The day the treasurer changes, the board asks for a report, or a member wants to know where the construction project stands, everything has to be reconstructed.

With zBilling.net, the church gets four things:

Three decisions are yours to make before you start:

1. Who holds the cash, and who enters transactions? Ideally two different people (see step 2).
2. Are tithes recorded by name? Anyone with access to the account sees the name attached to each transaction. You can record each member under their own name, under an envelope number, or group them all under one anonymous contact (see step 3).
3. Which funds need to be tracked separately? Construction, social outreach, missions… (see "Tracking a project").

The free Personal workspace allows two users: the treasurer and a second person (the pastor, the secretary or a deacon). Beyond that, the app asks you to upgrade to a paid plan.

The principle

Every time money comes in or goes out, you fill in three pieces of information:

• The account says where the money sits: in the cash box, at the bank, in the Orange Money account.
• The category says why it came in or went out. This is what produces the report.
• The payer / payee says who it came from or who it's going to.

Step 1 — Set up the church's accounts

Finance → Accounts

An account represents a real pocket of money. When the workspace is created, a cash account named "Caisse principale" already exists: open it with the Edit button and rename it Caisse Église.

Then add the other pockets with the New account, button, which offers Cash, Bank, Mobile and Wallets :

Don't create one account per type of revenue. There's no "tithes" account and "offerings" account if it all goes into the same cash box: the category is what tells them apart.

Step 2 — Working as a team: who enters, who approves?

If the treasurer handles everything alone, skip to step 3: all their transactions are approved right away.

With two people, the safest setup is this:

On a cash account, only entries from the cashier — the person physically holding the money — are approved right away. Those from the supervisor stay pending : they don't count toward the balance or the totals until the cashier confirms them. This way every amount is seen by two people.

Adding the second person

The treasurer, as the creator of the workspace, does this in four steps:

1. Create a role. Tools icon at the top of the screen → User management → Roles. Give it a name (Secrétariat) and save, without ticking anything.
2. Create the user. Same screen → New user. Search for the person; if they don't have an account, click Create a contact record, then on Create an account. Choose their username, the role Secrétariat and Activate immediately : a temporary password is displayed — hand it to them.
3. Giving them access to the Finance module. Finance → Settings → Manage role permissions. On the Secrétariat, row, in the Cash accounts table,, check View cash accounts and Add a transaction. Without this, the Finance menu won't show up for her.
4. Assigning her to the cash account. Finance → Accounts, button Edit for Caisse Église : put her in the Supervisor, field, and leave the treasurer in the Cashier.

On first login, the new person accepts the terms of use and replaces their temporary password.

Confirming a pending transaction

The treasurer opens Finance → Transactions. The transaction entered by the secretary is marked Awaiting your approval ; the ✓ icon in the Actions column confirms it. Until that's done, the cash account balance doesn't move.

On a bank account or mobile, mobile account, the rule is more relaxed: entries from both the manager and the operator are approved right away.

Step 3 — Contacts

Every transaction needs a payer or a payee. Two general-purpose contacts are enough to get started:

As entries build up, you'll also add the regular suppliers (the landlord, the electrician, the sound technician) and the people the church supports (the pastor, the caretaker).

What about the congregation?

Three ways to handle it, depending on what the board decided:

No need to create contacts in advance. In the transaction form, type an unfamiliar name into the Payer : field: the list offers Create the contact "…". A window opens with the name already filled in; click Save and the contact is selected. This requires an internet connection.

Step 4 — Sunday: recording the collection

After the service, the money is counted, ideally by two people. It's entered right away, on a phone or a computer.

Finance → New transaction opens the Caisse Express. Tab Income, card New revenue entry :

The label and category are typed freely the first time; after that they're offered in the list. Confirm with the green button at the bottom of the form (Save on computer, Receive on phone), then Yes, I confirm.

The date and time default to when you enter it. To record a collection from another day, open Advanced options : there you'll find Date / time, Reference and Note.

After that: one tap per transaction

Every recorded transaction becomes a card in Frequent transactions. Next time, tap the Offrande culte du dimanche, card, type the amount on the keypad, then Receive 85 500 FCFA : it's recorded, without retyping anything. Pinning a card keeps it at the top of the list.

A card remembers the label, the account and the payer : so there's one card per member for tithes recorded by name.

No signal in the room?

On a phone, the Express Till works offline. The transaction is kept on the device — a banner reads " 1 transaction waiting to be sent " — then it's sent automatically within a minute of the connection coming back, with no duplicate. Two conditions:

• you must have already used the Express Till with a connection on this phone;
• offline, you can record revenue and expenses, but you can't create a contact or make a transfer.

Check before closing the cash box

The total entered must match the total counted.

• On computer, the Express Till shows, on the right, the Day's ticket : the list of your entries for the day and the total Inflows.
• On any device, open Finance → Transactions : the screen shows the current day. Check Caisse Église in Accounts and read the Receipts. Transactions still pending aren't counted in it: the treasurer has to confirm them first.

If the total doesn't match the count, look for the error right away, while people are still there.

Step 5 — Monday: taking the deposit to the bank

Taking the cash account's money to the bank is neither an expense nor revenue : it's a transfer.

Finance → New transaction → Transfers tab → New transfer

Click Transfer 400 000 FCFA. The cash account drops by 400,000 F and the bank account rises by the same amount, immediately.

If the person making the deposit is neither the manager nor the operator of the bank account, the bank entry stays pending until one of them confirms it.

The same action is used to top up the Orange Money account or withdraw from the bank into the cash account.

A transfer shows up in the transaction list under the category TRANSFERTS INTERNES : an outflow on the source account, an inflow on the destination account. It adds nothing to what the church owns — see " Reporting " so you don't count it as revenue.

Step 6 — The week's expenses

Same screen, tab Expenses, card New expense :

Confirm (Save on computer, Pay out on phone), then confirm.

If the cash account doesn't have enough, the transaction is rejected:

Solde insuffisant sur « Caisse Église » (solde : 90 500 FCFA).

That's intentional: it flags a forgotten deposit, revenue that wasn't entered, or an expense paid out of another pocket.

Keep the receipt. The app records the transaction, not the paperwork. File the receipt or invoice and copy its number into the Reference : field: it becomes the transaction number, and the Keyword filter finds it.

Categories to use

Pick a short list, have the board approve it, and stick to it. The spelling must be identical from one entry to the next: DIME and DIMES give you two separate lines.

Income

Expenses

Click the exact row in the list. When you type a name, the list also suggests categories that start the same way, and pressing Enter selects the first highlighted row: typing OFFRANDE, you might accidentally select OFFRANDE SPECIALE without meaning to.

Step 7 — Reporting

Everything can be read in Finance → Transactions, with the Filters panel on the left. Three figures show at the top: Receipts, Outflows and Net balance.

The screen opens on the current day. If you don't see anything, change the Quick period : This wk., This month, Last mo., This year, then Search.

The monthly report for the board

1. Quick period → "Last mo."
2. Categories → select all your categories except TRANSFERTS INTERNES
3. Search

The three figures now give you the real revenue, real expenses and balance for the month. Without step 2, every bank deposit would inflate both receipts and outflows; the Net balance, however, stays accurate no matter what.

The Print button produces a PDF of the list, to hand to the board. For a breakdown by type, keep only one category: DIME on its own gives you the month's total tithes, LOYER that of rent payments.

To get the whole table at once, click Export : the CSV file contains the columns Category, Partner, Account, Income and Expense. In Excel or Google Sheets, a pivot table with Category as rows gives you the full report on one page (leave out the TRANSFERTS INTERNES).

How much is really there?

Finance → Accounts shows the balance of every account. The balance of Caisse Église must match, to the exact franc, what's in the box. Count the box once a week and compare: it's the simplest and most effective check there is.

Tracking a project (construction, missions…)

Use the same category for the project's revenue and expenses. Then filter on Categories → CONSTRUCTION and Quick period → "This year":

Encaissements    480 000 FCFA     Sorties    200 000 FCFA     Solde net    280 000 FCFA

The church has collected 480,000 F for construction, spent 200,000, and has 280,000 F left to put toward it. That's the answer to give the congregation, backed by numbers.

If the project's money is kept separate (a dedicated bank account), give it its own account: its balance then directly tells you what's left.

One member's record, and their receipt

If you've chosen tracking by name or by envelope: filter Payee → on Payee → the member, Quick period → "This year". The Receipts figure gives the total of what they've paid in, and the list gives the breakdown.

For a specific transaction, the Actions column column offers Print receipt, Send via WhatsApp and Send by email. The receipt is a slip titled " Payment receipt ": the church's name, the transaction number and date, the payer, the reason, and the amount in figures and in words.

Checking the bank and mobile money

Once a month, on a computer, compare the app against the bank's or operator's statement:

Finance → Statements → New statement

1. Choose the account, the period, then copy the opening balance and the closing balance printed on the statement. Click Start entering.
2. Enter the statement's lines (date, label, debit or credit), or paste them from Excel.
3. When a line matches a transaction already recorded — your Monday deposit, for example — the app flags it: Already entered? One click links it, with no duplicate created.
4. For anything missing (bank fees, a transfer received from a donor), enter the third party and the category: the transaction will be created when you validate.

At the top of the screen, the gap between the statement and the calculation shrinks with each line. When it shows Gap 0 — ready to validate, click Validate statement. Only the manager of the account (the supervisor, for a mobile account) can validate it, and transactions from a validated statement can no longer be edited or deleted.

Example: one Sunday, then one month

Sunday, October 4

Monday: transfer of 400,000 F to the bank. 45,500 F is left in the cash account for day-to-day expenses.

The month of October

Of which 280,000 F is set aside for construction (480,000 collected − 200,000 spent).

Common variants

Departments have their own cash account (choir, youth, women's group)

If a department keeps its own money, give it its own account: Caisse Jeunesse, with the department's treasurer as Cashier. They record their contributions and expenses there. When they hand a sum over to the church, it's a transfer from their cash account to the church's, not an expense. The department's treasurer counts as one of the workspace's users.

If the department doesn't have its own cash account and everything goes through the church's treasurer, don't add an account: a category JEUNESSE is enough, just like for a project.

Gifts received via Orange Money or MTN MoMo

Record them as revenue on the mobile account, with the donor as payer. If several gifts arrive during the week, the simplest approach is to enter them all at month end from the operator's statement (screen Statements) : ): nothing gets missed.

Several services or several branch churches

One extra service: specify it in the label (Offrande culte de 8 h, Offrande culte de 10 h). A branch church with its own cash box: one account per branch, with its leader as cashier.

An expense advanced by a member

A brother paid for the cement out of his own pocket and the church pays him back: a single expense, category CONSTRUCTION, payee = this brother, on the day of reimbursement. Note the supplier and the invoice in the Note.

Change of treasurer

Add the new treasurer as a user, then, in Finance → Accounts, button Edit for each account, put them in place of the previous one in the Cashier. The whole history stays in place. First do a cash count with both people present, and check that it matches the balance shown.

Habits to build

1. Enter it the same day, with the people who counted present. This is what makes the record undisputable.
2. Compare the total entered with the total counted before closing the box.
3. One account per real pocket of money, one category per kind. Don't mix the two.
4. Always write labels and categories the same way. and click the exact row in the list.
5. Don't confuse a transfer with an expense. Depositing at the bank is a transfer: entering it as an expense would distort your spending figures.
6. Exclude TRANSFERTS INTERNES when reading the revenue and expenses for a period.
7. Count the box every week and compare it to the cash account balance.
8. Reconcile the bank and mobile money every month in the Statements screen.
9. Change the period when the Transactions screen looks empty: it opens on the current day.

What this guide doesn't cover

Deliberately limited to the Contacts and Finance modules of the Personal workspace:

• no budgeting : the app tells you what was spent, not what was planned;
• no automatic fund reserves : what's left of a project is read using the category filter, or on a dedicated account;
• no tracking of pledges : only money actually received is recorded;
• no tax receipt : the document given is an ordinary payment receipt, in slip format;
• no access for members : members don't check their own record themselves — the treasurer reads it for them;
• no an on-screen report by category : it goes through the CSV export described in step 7;
• no archiving of supporting documents in this workflow: receipts stay filed on paper;
• no financial statements (balance sheet, income statement) : this guide keeps a cash ledger, not a set of accounts.

Beyond two users, the church needs to move to a paid plan.