Sacristo answers

Every answer below is aimed at a question people measurably search for, is written from named sources, and links to the page that handles the job itself. None of them is a landing page in disguise.

These guides are written for the person who runs the money at a church with staff on payroll. They set out what church accounting software has to do that ordinary accounting software does not, which payroll rules are ordinary and which are not, how a church budget is built from committed costs rather than from a giving forecast, what a contribution record has to hold and what it produces, what actually decides a pastor's compensation, and what a donation receipt must say to substantiate a gift. Each names the IRS publication it rests on, and each points at the worksheet or the record that does the work.

• Small church accounting software: what it must do that ordinary accounting cannot

  What small church accounting software has to handle beyond ordinary bookkeeping, and when a spreadsheet is genuinely enough.

• Church budgeting software: what a church budget has to hold that a business budget does not, and the order to build it in

  What church budgeting software has to hold that a business budget does not, and the order to build the budget in.

• Church donation tracking software and software to track church contributions: what has to be recorded, and what the record is for

  What church donation tracking software has to record, why it is recorded per household, and what the record produces.

• How much do pastors make, and why one published figure rarely answers it

  What decides what a pastor is paid, why published averages mislead, and how to work your own church's figure.

• Pastor salary by church size: why membership is the wrong measure, and what to use

  Why pastor pay tracks budget rather than membership, and how to work the figure for a church of your size.

• Church donation receipt: the three things it must say, and the sentence people forget

  What a church donation receipt must contain to substantiate a gift, and why the thank-you and the receipt are one document.

• Payroll for churches: which rules are ordinary, which are not, and where general payroll software gets a church wrong

  Which church payroll rules are ordinary and which are not, and where general payroll software gets a church wrong.