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I've been asked do an internal audit of our church's books and records. Naturally, I'll be assembling a team for that, but I need to develop the audit plan. Although I'm a trained accountant, I've never done one of these before and our church has never had one, so I'll be starting from scratch. Can anyone suggest a resource that would help me with the development and execution of the audit plan? Thanks.

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Ahhh... A fellow number cruncher. Well, After doing this for 15 years, I've found A big spreadsheet with lots of columns helps, but my best plan has never lasted long.

Allow 3 times as much "TIME" to do it.

Shouldn't be too bad though. How many years do you have to do? Do they use a computerized ledger? (Praying they do) I haven't has to cross foot with a pencil for years!!!!

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I could do just one year, but think I may do two. We use QuickBooks for general accounting and a program called Servant Keeper to track contributions, attendance, etc.

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I like Quickbooks. My office uses Peachtree, for income thru payroll. and another for Commission tracking, Royalty fees. That get audited every 2 years by mother Prudential.
I would start with cross comparing the 2 income records. I presume all missions expenses are under quickbooks too. Makes the expense part easy. Did they enter a budget? We're still using the same budget 4 years running. the economy kinda threw a wrench in any increases.

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Yes, Robert, we have a budget. The church council approves a new one every year. And yes, all expenses are run through QuickBooks. Do you use a particular resource for planning your audits?

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Yeah, its handed down from Corporate, and they send an impartial CPA to see if it all pans out. We export everything to excel then it it gets cut n paste. After about an hour, they pack up n leave. Peachtree has a built in audit that give a report of anything out of place. I run that at year end. The part I dislike is when I have to pull paper and verify entries. Fortunately, I'm the only one at this company, so I have a pretty good idea where i messed up. Looking at other peoples work is a job, especially if they aren't around to ask. My predecessor walked of the job.
I don't really like the audit process, it's pretty tedious. Come to think of it, how I ended up an accountant is a mind boggle in its self. I never really liked math, i was just good at it. Went from being a security supervisor to taking a job as a night auditor and worked my way up to second to the controller. Good thing I guess. It pays better than what I want to do. LOL, Pushing grocery carts. Anyway.
The closest I get to an official audit is just balancing everything against balance sheet, bank recs, and EOY financials. I usually end up reading the ledger. In between cups of coffee. LOL

Check out this site http://www.auditnet.org/icqlist.htm It has some great info on this topic.

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Thanks for the link, Robert. I'll check it out.

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Gideon, do you know any CPA's in your area working at a moderate to large size local CPA firm? If so, see if you can get a hold of an audit program from PPC's Guide to Audits of Nonprofit Organizations, or if they don't have that, see if you can get copies of audit programs from the PPC Guide to Audits of Small Businesses. Both of these are common resources used by CPA firms in performing external audits and should provide some valuable ideas. http://ppc.thomson.com/SiteComposer2/in ... omyID=1025

You could purchase the set, but I am guessing the cost would be about $300. Probably overkill, since you are not the intended audience. There may also be some comparable programs available for internal auditing, but I am not aware of where to find them.

Regards.

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Thanks, Jim. I also found some helpful information at AuditNet.org.

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