Submitted by: Greg Leavitt
Brian Young
Linda McCabe
The Georgia-Cumberland Conference (GCC) Auditing Department achieved an important milestone on December 31, 2020, by completing audits on all Conference entities within the preceding two-year period. This is the first time in more than 10 years that this has been accomplished!
Realizing the department was understaffed, the Conference administration voted in October 2018 to hire a fourth full-time auditor and a second contract auditor. As a result, the team audited 293 GCC entities in two years. Now all audits can be maintained on a two-year cycle.
What is an audit? It starts with a scheduled meeting between the auditor and the church or school treasurer. A questionnaire is completed during the meeting, giving the auditor much of the needed information. The rest comes from the computer and treasury records the treasurer provides.
A step-by-step “Audit Program” guides the process. Local practices that protect the donations and the treasurer are reviewed. Accuracy of data entry and recordkeeping are tested. Bank balances are verified. Compliance with GCC, federal, and state policies is assessed. Financials are analyzed. Then the audit report is prepared. Each audit is reviewed by the auditing director and then issued to the leaders of the audited entity, to be presented to their board for review and implementation of recommended changes.
The audit team also provides training and support for the entity treasurers — during audits; by phone and email; and, most recently, by 83 new training videos on the auditing section of the GCC website. Regular emails called “Treasurer Tips” provide resources to the church treasurers. These emails and videos have been so successful that several other conferences are using them to help train their own treasurers.
The members of the audit team love working together, and they feel privileged to serve with the dedicated team of Georgia-Cumberland Conference treasurers.
Georgia-Cumberland | May 2021
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