Over the years, our team has been hard at work, reviewing user feedback and evaluating how we can make church financial management even more efficient for churches like yours. Now, this work has culminated in the NEW Church360° Ledger church accounting software.
When it comes to this update, we want to balance a streamlined, simplified experience for people without a background with dedicated accounts as well as skilled accountants who might want more control over account behavior and calculations. The goal of the new Church360° Ledger is to offer additional account and customization options to allow you to keep your favorite processes from the former Church360° Ledger while enjoying major organizational and reporting improvements.
In this blog, we’ll briefly highlight the excellent improvements to the following:
- Restricted Funds and (Equity-backed) Funds
- Categories and Parent Accounts
- More Visibility on Equity Accounts
- Integrations
- Report Writer
Restricted Funds and (Equity-backed) Funds
The biggest change in the new Church360° Ledger relates to how special-purpose funds are addressed. Previously, these funds were set up as Restricted Funds. This required users to manually create income and expense accounts for these funds to track them.
Now, these funds act as part of the equity of the church’s finances, with built-in income and expense accounts. This will allow for easier creation, budgeting, management, and reporting for these types of items in the chart of accounts.
We know that everyone has a preferred way of doing things, so this change is not mandatory. However, we think you’ll find this update extremely beneficial.
Categories and Parent Accounts
In the previous Church360° Ledger system, users could set up their chart of accounts with custom categories, making for quick reporting. Now, in the new Church360° Ledger, those categories have been imported along with their accounts as parent accounts.
Parent accounts act very similarly to categories, in that they do not hold their own balance but simply group and total the accounts listed under them. The primary difference between the two pertains to reconciliation. Previously, it had to be done on an account-by-account basis, which tended to be confusing. Now, an overarching parent account can be reconciled with all transactions from its subaccounts appearing in the reconciliation window.
More Visibility on Equity Accounts
Financial software must ensure that totals on both sides of the accounting equation are equal. In the previous Church360° Ledger site, equity is largely hidden and is calculated automatically as asset, liability, and restricted funds fluctuate. Now, users can create equity accounts as well as transfer funds to accounts designated for specific purposes (now called Funds).
While the use of equity accounts, book equity, or retained income is rather specialized and not always required, it‘s a helpful feature if your personnel or church council requires more dominion over equity balance and reporting.
Integrations
We’re excited to share that the new Church360° Ledger will eventually allow for both Paychex and Paycor integrations!
Report Writer
For more transparency and ease in the auditing process, the new Church360° Ledger has a new report writer to allow for more customized reports. Users can start with a default report or create one completely from scratch and save it or share it with other users.
For a more in-depth look at specific features and improvements, visit the Church360° Ledger Help Center.
