Client background

First Presbyterian Church of Orlando has been deeply rooted in the Orlando community for over 140 years and works within a larger network of churches to ensure accountability, share resources and support the ministry of the global church.

The business challenge

First Presbyterian Church of Orlando’s financial recording of church deposits were limited to relying on manual processes, with the imports and exports from their church management system to Sage Intacct taking two to three hours per week. There was a certain level of human intervention and data manipulation to create the imports that was error-prone and inefficient. Bank reconciliations, including reconciling credit cards and Automatic Clearing House (ACH) transactions, were very labor-intensive, forcing employees to spend 10-12 hours per month on managing four bank accounts. Realizing how much time was spent each month with antiquated, manual processes, First Presbyterian Church of Orlando decided they needed a more efficient process for their accounting of church deposits.

Strategy and solution

As First Presbyterian Church of Orlando uses Sage Intacct for their accounting system, the Baker Tilly Digital team was able to efficiently implement our Church Management Systems Integration into their pre-existing system, making a significant difference in their time and efforts exerted each month. Initially focusing on contribution transactions, Baker Tilly Digital encouraged them to process and map non-contribution transactions as well. By doing this, we were able to have a “double-win” to cover both areas that each had very manual, time-consuming steps.

With our Church Management Systems Integration, First Presbyterian Church of Orlando was able to achieve the following:

• 10 to 12 hours per month saved working on reconciling four bank accounts by automating the process to match bank and general ledger records
• A move from manual import/export processes to an application programming interface (API) integration, saving them two to three hours per week and delivering a higher level of accuracy and less data manipulation when creating the imports

With the help from Baker Tilly Digital, First Presbyterian Church of Orlando now has a church management system that not only transfers data efficiently but also cuts down on countless hours of unnecessary manual efforts.