Good Shepherd Bookkeeping Solutions

10/14/2026

One thing we intentionally try to avoid is having one person at Good Shepherd be the only person who really understands a client’s books.

That might sound a little strange. After all, every client has an assigned bookkeeper who works closely with their church and gets to know their finances really well.

But we also know what happens when too much knowledge lives with one person.

People take vacations. They get sick. They change roles. And sometimes a question comes up that benefits from another set of eyes.

That’s why we work in small teams.

Each partner has an assigned bookkeeper who handles the regular bookkeeping and knows the details of their ministry. But they also have a peer and team lead who are familiar with the account and involved in reviewing the work.

We also document recurring processes and tasks so the work does not depend on someone remembering how something is supposed to be done. In theory, any other person on staff should be able to step in, understand the process, and keep things moving.

You still get the consistency of one primary bookkeeper, with the security of a team that knows how your church works.

You have someone who knows your church well, but there is a team and a documented process behind them.

We think that makes for better bookkeeping and a much more dependable partnership over the long run.

10/08/2026

A housing allowance cannot be designated retroactively at year-end.

The housing allowance needs to be officially designated before the compensation is paid. This can be documented through a compensation agreement, board minutes, a resolution, or another appropriate church record.

If the amount changes during the year, the church can generally update the designation for future compensation, but not for amounts that have already been paid.

This is a good item to review when a pastor is hired, compensation changes, or a new year is approaching.

We cover this and other common housing allowance and clergy payroll issues in our new guide: https://goodshepherdbookkeeping.com/2026/09/28/church-payroll-pastors-housing-allowance/

10/06/2026

One thing some churches are surprised by when they begin working with us is how much happens before we ever start the regular bookkeeping.

We take onboarding pretty seriously because a lot can get missed when bookkeeping changes hands.

Maybe there are restricted funds that have always been handled a certain way, or month-end entries that someone knows need to happen because they have been doing them for years. More often, there are simply processes that live in someone’s head and have never been written down.

Those are the kinds of things that may be second nature to the person who has handled the books for years, but they are not obvious to someone stepping in for the first time.

So while onboarding certainly involves the technical side of getting access to QuickBooks, payroll, giving platforms, and the other systems we will be using, there is a lot more to it.

We have a great team helping lead that process, including our Systems Administrator and Assistant Manager of Bookkeeping Operations. They are extremely thorough about making sure the systems are ready, but also about making sure the knowledge gets transferred.

We spend time learning how the church’s books actually work, reviewing recurring processes, understanding the reports leadership uses, and working through anything unusual our bookkeeper needs to know. We also meet weekly during onboarding so questions and roadblocks can be handled as they come up.

By the time the regular bookkeeping begins, we want our bookkeeper to already understand the church well enough to step in and do the work correctly from the beginning.

10/02/2026

One of the most common payroll mistakes we see with pastors claiming a housing allowance is having Social Security and Medicare withheld from their paychecks like a typical W-2 employee.

For qualifying ministers, that generally should not be happening.

This does not mean pastors are exempt from Social Security and Medicare taxes. Instead, ministers have a unique tax status: they are generally treated as employees for federal income tax purposes, but as self-employed for Social Security and Medicare purposes.

So rather than the church withholding Social Security and Medicare from each paycheck and paying an employer share, the pastor generally pays those taxes through self-employment tax (SECA).

The housing allowance is also generally included when calculating SECA, even though a qualifying housing allowance may be excluded from federal income tax.

If your pastor receives a housing allowance, it is worth double-checking how it is set up in payroll.

We cover this and several other common pastor payroll and housing allowance issues in our new guide:

Learn how church payroll works for pastors, including housing allowance eligibility, SECA, Social Security and Medicare, estimated taxes, and W-2 reporting.

09/30/2026

Before your church finalizes next year's budget, check these two things.

1. Know which expenses are fixed and which ones can flex.

Payroll, rent or mortgage payments, insurance, and software subscriptions usually won't change much if giving comes in below budget.

Other areas may have more flexibility. Knowing the difference helps church leaders answer an important question before the year even starts:

"If giving is 5% below budget, where would we adjust?"

That is a much better conversation to have during budgeting than halfway through the year.

2. Build some breathing room into the budget.

Repairs can (and will) happen when you least expect them. Insurance and other vendor costs are bound to increase.

If every dollar of projected income is already committed, even a relatively small surprise can create a problem.

Consider including a reasonable contingency or leaving some margin rather than budgeting projected income all the way down to zero.

A good church budget doesn't just tell you what you hope will happen. It helps your leadership team make wise decisions when things don't go exactly according to plan.

Check out our budgeting guide for more practical tips that will help strengthen your church's next budget: https://goodshepherdbookkeeping.com/2025/09/26/church-budgeting-guide/

09/28/2026

When a church is helping a new ministry get started, one of the first questions we think through is: how should the accounting be set up so the church can clearly see what belongs to the new ministry?

We had a conversation about this recently with a church that will temporarily handle the finances for a new ministry.

The activity may run through the same bank accounts and accounting system, but the income and expenses still need to be tracked separately enough that leadership can pull a report and see the new ministry on its own.

That becomes especially important if the ministry eventually becomes a separate organization. At that point, you should not have to go back through months of transactions trying to figure out what belongs to whom.

Whenever a church adds a new ministry, program, or initiative, it is worth thinking through the reporting before the activity starts. If leadership will want to see it separately later, the accounting needs to be set up to track it separately from the beginning.

09/25/2026

One of the first things we look at when a church wants to move to QuickBooks Online is not the software. It is the church’s fiscal year.

Depending on the accounting system they are coming from, historical data typically does not transfer cleanly into QuickBooks. You can rebuild that history, but the timing of the conversion can make a significant difference in how much work is involved.

Our preference is to keep an entire fiscal year in one accounting system.

If a church switches at fiscal year-end, the prior year can remain in the old system and the new year can begin in QuickBooks with the correct beginning balances, chart of accounts, vendors, and other setup.

If the church switches halfway through the year, we will generally rebuild the earlier months of that fiscal year in QuickBooks as part of the conversion. That way leadership still has one complete set of reports for the year rather than having to combine information from two systems.

Choosing the right cutover date can save a church a significant amount of rebuilding and keep an entire year of financial reporting in one place.

09/23/2026

One of the easiest mistakes for a church to make is asking, “Can we afford this?” and stopping there.

We see this most often with things like adding staff, taking on a building project, or starting a new ministry.

Talking through the decision is important, but it is also helpful to actually run the numbers and see what the decision looks like over time.

A new staff position may fit in this year’s budget, but what happens once you include payroll taxes, benefits, future raises, and normal increases in other expenses? What if giving comes in a little below plan?

Being able to build a realistic cash projection and model those scenarios is a valuable skill. It lets leadership see the financial impact over the next few years instead of relying only on whether there is enough room in the budget today.

Sometimes the numbers confirm the plan works. Other times they show where the plan needs to change before the church commits.

09/17/2026

We recently met with a church where three different people were involved in paying bills, but no one could clearly explain who was responsible for making sure every bill was actually recorded.

It wasn’t really anyone’s fault. As the church grew, different people just picked up different pieces of the process.

This is something we see fairly often in churches. Financial responsibilities get added as the church grows, but nobody ever goes back and asks whether the whole process still makes sense.

You probably don’t need a 30-page procedures manual to fix this. But everyone involved should be able to answer three things:

What am I responsible for?
Who reviews it?
When should it be done?

09/14/2026

If you remember hearing about the big overtime changes a couple of years ago, there’s been an important update.

In 2024, the Department of Labor issued a new rule that raised the minimum salary for many employees to qualify as exempt from overtime. The threshold went from $35,568 to $43,888 in July 2024 and was scheduled to jump again to $58,656 in January 2025, with automatic increases after that.

But before that second increase took effect, federal courts struck down the rule. Then, in May 2026, the DOL formally removed it from its regulations. The federal threshold is now back to $35,568 per year ($684/week).

Keep in mind, this federal salary threshold is only one part of the overtime rules. Whether an employee qualifies as exempt can also depend on the work they actually do, and some states have stricter requirements than the federal rules.

If you have questions, check out HR Ministry Solutions' resource on what happened and what it means for churches and ministries:

The DOL's 2026 overtime rollback reversed the 2024 salary threshold rule. Here's what changed, what it means for your ministry, and how to respond.