# Month-end close checklist for a small church Version 2026-07-29. Written for churchposting.com. Print it, work down it, initial each line, and file it with the month's reports. Nothing here is tax or legal advice for your church. Every dated federal rule in this file was read off the page named beside it on 29 July 2026. Where no source is named, the item is a practice, not a rule, and you can change it. --- ## Before the close: the Sunday loop Run this every service. Four steps, four different pairs of hands. - [ ] **Secure.** Two people move the offering, or it goes straight into a locked drop box. Nobody is ever alone with it, including on the walk to the office. - [ ] **Count.** Two counters who are not married to each other and not parent and child. Both sign the count sheet. - [ ] **Deposit.** Same day into the night drop where the bank has one. Otherwise sealed in the safe with the signed count sheet photographed first. - [ ] **Enter.** Somebody who did not count types the gifts in, working from the signed sheet rather than from the cash. Use `bookkeeping-cycle-count-sheet.csv` for the count. It carries the denomination grid, the check list, the fund allocation, the zero-difference check, and the two signature lines. --- ## The close itself. Target: the tenth of the following month ### 1. Get the statements in - [ ] Every bank account statement for the month, opened by the person who will reconcile, not by the person who writes checks. - [ ] Every credit card and debit card statement. - [ ] The giving platform's monthly payout report, with fees shown separately from gifts. - [ ] The payroll provider's report for the month. ### 2. Reconcile - [ ] Reconcile every bank account. The Greater Washington Society of CPAs Educational Foundation states the standard plainly: "an individual other than the person writing checks and making deposits should reconcile the bank account each month." (nonprofitaccountingbasics.org/reporting-operations/bank-reconciliations) - [ ] Reconcile every card account. - [ ] Tie each Sunday's deposit to a signed count sheet. A deposit with no sheet behind it is the exception you write down, not the one you skip. - [ ] Tie the giving platform payout to the gifts recorded, with the processing fee posted as an expense rather than netted out of income. - [ ] List every check outstanding more than 90 days and ask why. - [ ] Confirm no reconciliation is more than one month behind. Uniform Commercial Code 4-406 precludes a customer who does not discover and report an unauthorized signature or alteration within one year of the statement being made available from asserting it against the bank. (law.cornell.edu/ucc/4/4-406) ### 3. Print the three pages - [ ] **Balance sheet by fund.** One column per fund. The columns add up to the cash in the bank. If they do not, stop here; nothing downstream is true. - [ ] **Income and expense against budget**, this month and the year so far. - [ ] **Fund activity**, showing what came into and out of every restricted and designated fund. ### 4. Read them before anyone else does - [ ] Any fund with a negative balance. A negative restricted fund means restricted money was spent on something else. - [ ] Any budget line over or under by more than a quarter, with a sentence of explanation ready. - [ ] Any expense with no receipt attached. - [ ] Any new vendor paid this month, and who approved it. - [ ] Payroll: gross, taxes withheld, and the deposit made, all three agreeing. ### 5. Hand it over - [ ] Send the three pages to the finance committee before the meeting, not during it. A committee reading numbers for the first time in the room cannot govern them. - [ ] File the month's pack: the three reports, the reconciliations, the count sheets, and this checklist with initials on it. --- ## Once a quarter - [ ] The bank statement goes **unopened** to an elder or a deacon with no access to the accounts. They open it, read the checks, and initial the last page. This is the only step in the whole cycle a bookkeeper cannot perform on herself. - [ ] Review who has login access to the ledger, the giving platform, and the bank, and remove anybody who has left. - [ ] Check that every board designation made this quarter is written in the minutes with a date and a dollar figure. --- ## The year-end sequence Dates below are the federal deadlines for the 2026 tax year, read off IRS pages on 29 July 2026. Confirm them against the current instructions before you rely on them, and take anything about ministers to a CPA who has done clergy returns. ### December, before the year closes - [ ] Bank the last deposit of the year and note the date. A gift mailed in December and banked in January belongs to the year the church received it. - [ ] Ask the board to designate any minister's housing allowance for next year **before** the first affected paycheck, and record it in the minutes with a date. - [ ] Reconcile December as soon as the statement arrives, ahead of everything else on this list. - [ ] Chase down every gift with no giver attached and every envelope with a mismatch. February is too late. ### January, the statements - [ ] Produce a giving statement for every giver, and check that it carries all of the following. The IRS requires a written acknowledgment to contain the "name of the organization", the "amount of cash contribution", a "description (but not value) of non-cash contribution", a "statement that no goods or services were provided by the organization, if that is the case", a "description and good faith estimate of the value of goods or services, if any, that organization provided in return for the contribution", and a "statement that goods or services, if any, that the organization provided in return for the contribution consisted entirely of intangible religious benefits, if that was the case". (irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/charitable-contributions-written-acknowledgments) - [ ] Read the fine print at the bottom of a real printed statement. The goods-and-services sentence is the one software leaves out. - [ ] Confirm the substantiation threshold on the page you are working from. Publication 526 (2025) states that "if you make a contribution of $250 or more, you must obtain and keep a contemporaneous written acknowledgment (CWA) from the qualified organization", and that the CWA "must be received by you on or before the earlier of: (1) the date you file your original tax return for the year of the contribution, or (2) the due date (including extensions) of your tax return for that year". (irs.gov/publications/p526) - [ ] Check that designated gifts kept their designation all the way from the giving platform to the statement. - [ ] Decide gross or net on fee-covered gifts before the first statement goes out, not after 300 have. - [ ] Send statements out by the end of January. No federal rule sets that date for the church, and the donor's deadline is the earlier of filing and the return due date, so January is the practice that keeps you out of the donor's way. ### January, the payroll forms - [ ] File Form 941 for the fourth quarter. Publication 15 (2026) gives the quarterly due dates as April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31. (irs.gov/publications/p15) - [ ] File Copy A of every Form W-2 with the Social Security Administration. The 2026 General Instructions for Forms W-2 and W-3 say to "mail or electronically file Copy A of Form(s) W-2 and Form W-3 with the SSA by February 1, 2027". (irs.gov/instructions/iw2w3) - [ ] Furnish Copies B, C and 2 to employees. Same instructions: "generally, you must furnish Copies B, C, and 2 of Form W-2 to your employees by February 1, 2027". - [ ] Count your information returns across all types. The same instructions state you must e-file "if you are required to file at least 10 information returns". - [ ] Check next year's deposit schedule. Publication 15 (2026): "if the accumulated employment tax liability during the lookback period is $50,000 or less, you're a monthly depositor for the current quarter", the lookback period being "the four quarters in the 12-month period ending June 30 of the preceding year". A monthly depositor deposits "on or before the 15th day of the following month". Accumulate $100,000 or more on any day and the deposit is due the next business day. ### February, the year in one page - [ ] Closing balance for every fund, with the opening balance beside it. - [ ] Income by source and expense by category against the adopted budget. - [ ] A written note on every fund that moved by more than a quarter. - [ ] The list of board designations made and released during the year. - [ ] Hand the pack to the board, and to anybody the church has promised financial statements to. --- ## What this church does not have to file Most tax-exempt organizations file an annual information return and somebody outside reads it. The IRS exempts "a church, an interchurch organization of local units of a church, a convention or association of churches", along with "an integrated auxiliary of a church", "a church-affiliated organization that is exclusively engaged in managing funds or maintaining retirement programs", and "a school below college level affiliated with a church or operated by a religious order". (irs.gov/charities-non-profits/annual-exempt-organization-return-who-must-file) No filing means no outside deadline forcing the books into shape and no public document a member can look up. The only people who will ever catch a fund balance that quietly went negative are the ones sitting in your own finance meeting, which is the entire reason this checklist has a quarterly section in it. --- ## The three signatures this cycle depends on | Job | Who | Who it must not be | | --- | --- | --- | | Count the offering | Two people, both signing | Married to each other, or parent and child | | Enter the gifts | One person | Either counter | | Reconcile the bank | One person, opening the statement themselves | The person who writes checks or makes deposits | | Sign checks | One person | The reconciler | | Quarterly review | An elder or deacon | Anyone with account access | Finding the third and fourth volunteer is worth more than any feature on any software comparison chart.