A desktop app that walks volunteer audit committees through the annual financial review every United Methodist church needs under Book of Discipline ¶258.4. Replace the spreadsheet-and-prayer workflow with a structured, 8-phase process.
98.8% recall on real data. A Covenant UMC chart of 488 accounts reduced to 6 manual reviews — the account-matching engine does the data-cleaning so your committee can do the judgment work.
Most local churches skip the annual audit — not out of negligence, but because volunteer committees don't know where to start.
of UMC local churches don't produce the audit the Discipline requires
typical CPA cost for a church audit — running a checklist not designed for designated funds
accounts to reconcile across systems with different names and codes
of data-cleaning before any audit work begins — if you even know how
One app. Eight phases. A complete Discipline-compliant review.
Verify that the balance sheet, income statement, and fund balances agree to the general ledger. Anomaly detection flags round numbers, duplicates, and check gaps.
Import bank statements and the GL, then let the auto-aliasing engine match accounts across systems. 98.8% recall — 488 accounts reduced to 6 manual reviews.
Tie counting sheets to GL deposits for 6 sampled Sundays. Trace revenue entries to bank deposits and giving records. Verify segregation of duties.
Stratified random sample of expenditures. Per-transaction reviewer form checks documentation, authorization, coding, and purpose. Optional AI receipt extraction.
Per-employee review: W-2/W-4/I-9/941 on file, salary vs. approved schedule, housing allowance charge-conference resolution, accountable reimbursement plans.
Investment custodian confirmation tracking, withdrawal sampling with deposit traces, and per-fund donor restriction compliance checks.
Controls questionnaire on offering handling and disbursements. Trust clause footnote generator. Apportionment reconciliation. Fidelity bond verification.
Assemble all findings and signatory information into the committee report, ready for the charge conference packet.
.cfrt file. Email it to a co-reviewer, archive with the charge conference packet.
Export your chart of accounts and general ledger from QuickBooks, Aplos, or any system that exports CSV/Excel. Import bank statements the same way.
The app generates samples, presents per-item review forms, and auto-creates findings when it spots issues. Your committee works through the phases at their own pace.
When all phases are complete, export the committee report for the charge conference — findings, recommendations, and signatory lines included.
This tool was built and validated against real church data — 488 accounts, 1,782 transactions, zero parser errors. Every procedure maps to the GCFA Local Church Audit Guide, Fifth Edition (Feb 2021). It's the tool I wanted when my own audit committee sat down with a stack of bank statements and no idea where to start.
One fee. One audit cycle. No subscription.
Under the $200 discretionary-spend threshold for most churches — no board vote needed.
Heads up: macOS only at launch. Windows support is on the roadmap — ask to be notified.
Two smaller tools that share the same data model — so a monthly habit rolls up into the annual review without re-entering anything.
Close the books every month in about 30 minutes — import the bank statement
and GL, auto-match transactions, and flag anything stale. Then at year-end, hand
the whole 12 months to your audit committee in one click as a
.cfrt engagement file. No re-keying, no rebuilding the chart of
accounts, no “wait, which year was that?”
~$12/month — planned subscription.
Notify me at launchUpload your council budget and get a ministry-purpose narrative back — the kind that turns “Salary $85K, Utilities $12K” into “$245K on worship and discipleship.” Three framing schemes, Markdown and Word export, vital-signs integration.
$25 — planned one-time.
Notify me at launchThe audit committee chair drives it, but anyone with access to the bank statements and accounting exports can run it. Best practice (and the Discipline's intent) is that the treasurer prepares the data and someone not involved in day-to-day bookkeeping performs the review — typically two or three lay members appointed by the charge conference. If your church engages an outside CPA or retired accountant for the review, they can use it too; it structures the working papers either way.
Most committees finish in 8–12 hours across two sittings once the data is exported — a Saturday morning to import and work through Phases 0–3, then a second session for Phases 4–8 and the report. The front-loaded data-cleaning that used to eat a full weekend is what the auto-aliasing engine is for; that's the time you get back.
It's a financial review, which is what the Book of Discipline ¶258.4 actually requires. The word “audit” is an AICPA-protected term that implies CPA involvement. This tool produces the committee-level review that most local churches need.
QuickBooks Desktop (IIF + GL CSV), QuickBooks Online (CSV export), Aplos, Tithe.ly, Pushpay, and any system that exports CSV or Excel. The column mapper handles whatever format your system produces.
All three export CSV or Excel, which is the only shape the tool needs. Realm (Ledger Detail or General Ledger reports), Servant Keeper (Account Register), and ChurchTrac (Transactions export) have all been smoke-tested against the column mapper. If your platform is something more obscure, the mapper will still pick up date/amount/description columns automatically — ask and I'll confirm before you buy.
Yes. A sample .cfrt file pre-loaded with anonymized Covenant UMC data
and a short walkthrough video are available on request —
email me
and I'll send both. If you buy and the tool doesn't fit your church's workflow
within 30 days, refund is no questions asked.
No. The app runs entirely on your Mac. Your financial data stays in the
.cfrt engagement file on your local disk. The only optional network
call is AI receipt extraction (if you provide your own API key).
Today the compliance checks (apportionments, trust clause, housing allowance) follow UMC standards, but the core features — bank reconciliation, expense testing, payroll review, narrative budgets — work for any church. We're actively developing support for other denominations and their reporting requirements.
Mac only at launch. Windows support is planned when demand warrants it — the codebase supports it, it's just a code-signing and build-pipeline question.
Questions about fit, demo request, or anything else — drop a note and I'll reply personally.