This glamourous job has lots of perks. You know, like total control (at least on paper) over the finances of a large organization. Keys to rooms in the church that other people can't get into. Combinations for the safes. Passwords and admin access on the computers. Oh yeah, and the responsibility to keep things running smoothly and error free.
That error free thing can be a pain sometimes.
I just spent last night down in the basement of the church re-reconciling the main church checking account back to January of this year. If you think that would take awhile with your checkbook, think of how long it takes for an entire church, including payroll, bills, mission checks, donations, etc. I started about 9:00 pm after worship team practice, and finally left around 5:45 am this morning. And yes, I did have to get up for work this morning. Two hours of sleep, color me rested!
All because somewhere along the line a couple entries were put in wrong (I'm innocent!), but in such a way that they didn't rear their ugly heads until we were preparing mid-year giving reports. And in QuickBooks, if you change a transaction that has already been reconcilied, you can't just fix it without undoing all of the later reconciliations and then doing them all from scratch again.
Now technically, I could have left the transactions the way they were. I could have manually corrected the reports and added an adjustment in the current month. But that pains me greatly. If you haven't noticed, I have a little flair of perfectionism flowing in my veins. I bit the bullet and spent the entire night at the church in the treasurer's office.
Again.
By my count, that's three times this year.
Next time, I'll invite you to join me. You just might want to be treasurer too!
DotD: Sudoku toilet paper - $7.16 - In honor of Greg's sudoku post. Sorry, Greg, it isn't binary.
11 comments:
"Now technically, I could have left the transactions the way they were. I could have manually corrected the reports and added an adjustment in the current month"
...But: you didn't. Normally I try to back you up - but I'm calling "idiot" on this one.
Sorry bud, sometimes the truth hurts... :-)
Here I am, looking for a simple pity party, and you call me an idiot. What kind of lousy friend are you? ;-)
Let me explain my reasoning a bit, in hopes of reclaiming my self-justified pity party. The option I mentioned of manually adjusting the reports and puttying in an adjustment in the current month is the quick fix that works as long as I am the only one working with the data and I always remember that I need to take that into account.
Sure, I could have been done in less than an hour last night, but I'd probably be setting myself up for even more pain down the road. If one of the affected people came in and asked for another copy of their giving statement and I didn't know about it or forgot about the adjustments, the new copy wouldn't match the old one. People don't get real excited about that when you're talking about contribution statements when tax benefits are on the line.
Now that I think about it, I guess I can just blame the IRS. If it wasn't for the tax benefits, it wouldn't have mattered how I made the books balance at all. Funny how everything always comes back to death, taxes, and lawyers.
"Score!"
"Where?"
And so few people even know what that means... ;-)
I, however, shall not forget. The torch shall continue to burn brightly.
You're flypaper!
There's always a daily good deal at Woot.com
I guess that's a little bit more forgivable. More detailed info on the problem and the way the software works may have made that more clear.
Now, since taxs aren't due till April I need to ask why you stayed up all night....?
(Devil's Advocate FTW!)
What are you trying to say, Bauer? Are you really comparing my deal-finding prowess to a site called Woot? That's it, one less bedtime story for you!
These are the mid-year giving reports, so it covers giving from January through the end of June. We don't want to wait too much longer before sending them out.
The reason I had to pull and all-nighter is that doing the reconciling is hard to just do pieces at a time. You can stop on month boundaries, but even that is a little tricky since a lot of the of the transactions are either ongoing, or cross month boundaries. Plus, if I started and didn't stop, I'd really be tying the hands of our bookkeeper and financial secretary, since there are limits to what I would want them to be doing while I was in the middle of this process.
My other option was to spend the 8 or 9 hours that it ended up taking during the day on a weekend. The problem with that is that I don't have a free weekend coming up for a number of weeks, and that would be getting too late to send out these reports.
So, all things considered, I just sat there until I was done, and then collapsed when I got home. I actually made it through work okay the next day, but I could barely even stay awake for a good Seinfeld episode at 8:30 the next night. I went to bed at 9:00, which is the earliest I've gone to bed in a good number of years (pre-highschool?).
Pre-high school? Hmmm... Before the days of "Score!" "Where?" ... before the days of the Taj Mahal. Ahh... those were the days.
Before the dark times.
Before the Empire.
As long as you don't remove the "Who was that girl?" story, I think I'm willing to sacrifice....but I'm still waiting for this book....I think it would make great Wheat for the next TEC....
2 points to Joel.
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